Page 2 of 4th Silence (Schock Sisters Mystery #4)

Meg

“ Y ou gave out our office number?” Charlie asks in that quiet, steady tone that means death to all.

Our mother—the woman who can’t resist a cold case—sails past, wheeling her cart stacked high with boxes behind her.

“Of course,” she says, as if Charlie is the irrational one for even asking. “I couldn’t exactly use my cell. Your father would kill me.”

“I might kill you.”

On cue, the phone rings, the repetitive noise blaring from the receptionist’s desk and the conference room.

I sometimes have nightmares about that sound.

It’s why I tend to work with earbuds in.

The bleeping drives me half mad and now pulls me from the oncoming storm between the two women I love most.

I fall in step behind Mom and give Charlie the here-we-go look.

In the conference room, I glance at the device sitting on the credenza. Three lines blink red like an exclamation mark at the fact no one has picked up the calls.

“At what point,” Charlie says, “did I think it was a good idea to get multiple lines?”

At this, I laugh.

Mom gestures at the handset still sitting in the cradle. “Is Haley not here? Someone should get that. They might be tipsters.”

Or lunatics .

“Gee, Mom,” Charlie says, “perhaps we should have discussed that very thing before you released our number to the media. And, no, Haley isn’t.

Car trouble. The calls will go to voicemail.

And, if we lose our assistant over this, I will kill you.

This stunt just earned her a bigger Christmas bonus. And you’re paying it.”

Yikes . I can’t remember the last time I saw Charlie this steamed at our mother.

The two lock eyes in a brutal stare-down. I have to give my sister credit for holding her temper. Anyone else would have skid marks by now.

“Alrighty.” I smack my palms together. “What have we got here?”

I wedge myself between them and grab the top box off the pile. This might be just what I need today. A distraction.

From Galishea.

From Darcy.

From dead girls who deserved better than whatever hell they suffered before being dumped on the side of a road, where animals undoubtedly feasted on their dying flesh.

My God.

I set it on the table while the phone continues its assault on my tattered nerves.

It’s going to be a long morning.

The blaring quiets—thank you—and immediately starts again, and everything inside my brain short-circuits.

I move to the credenza, run my fingers along the back of the phone, and yank the plug. The ringing still echoes from the reception area, but not nearly as loudly.

“Thank you,” Mom says. “How annoying.”

“Ha!” Charlie says with pure disbelief.

And then hers starts ringing. She holds it up so we can see the display.

JJ Carrington’s flashing smile lights up the screen under the contact name “The Emperor.”

“Excellent!” Charlie huffs. “He can’t be happy.”

She lowers the phone and stares at it for a split second. “Might as well get it over with.” She stabs at it and lifts it to her ear. “Before you say anything, I’m sorry. My mother just got here. Let me call you back.”

JJ’s voice booms through the line, and Charlie flinches.

“Well,” Mom says, her full throttle indignance smothering us. “If law enforcement had done something sooner, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

JJ’s yelling intensifies. Suddenly, my terror over Jerome hinting at marriage last night doesn’t seem like such a huge event.

“JJ,” Charlie says, her voice level. “I understand. Believe me, I’m not pleased with her either. But, I have to call you back.”

More screaming, and Charlie gazes at the ceiling, draws a long breath, and does the only thing she can. She hangs up on The Emperor.

“Mom, you’re totally killing me,” she says. “Do you have any idea how hard that man works? His list of cases reaches the sky.”

Before our mother can launch into one of her lectures about subpar police work, I clear my throat and gesture to the boxes. “What is all this?”

“You’ll love it,” Mom says, flipping a lid off one.

As she busies herself unloading files, I glance back at Charlie and her murderous glare. “I’ve got this,” I say. “Go deal with JJ.”

“I appreciate it, however, the best way to do that is to pummel him with information. Which I don’t have.”

“Well,” Mom drawls, “if we’d stop wasting time, I could show you.”

“Ha!” Charlie barks again, and all I can think is my mother might wind up in a body bag tonight.

After my sister bludgeons her.

My head is pounding. Between ghosts of dead women and Jerome’s marriage hint, I’m spent.

I mean marriage ?

It’s not that I don’t love Jerome. I do. He may not be JJ with his flashing smile, slick suits, and big-time job, but Jerome is … well … everything. Understanding when I need it. Loving when I need it.

Tough when I need it.

Jerome accepts and shares me with the dead when most men wouldn’t.

And now he wants to marry me?

I glance at my mother, obsessed, brilliant, and the one who passed her passion to me, and reality smacks at me. I think about all my late nights. My getting lost in my work reconstructing the dead so we can find them justice.

Like Mom, I’m obsessed. Our methods might be different—Mom and her reporting versus me and my sculpting—but I have turned into her.

Dear God, please help me .

Jerome must be out of his mind. Why would anyone subject themselves to this chaos?

I shake it off. Chalk it up to sheer exhaustion. I need sleep. A lot of it. If I could squeeze even one ounce of reason from my strung-out mind, I’d march right out the door and go home.

Mom points at the boxes. “I have everything in here.”

I keep my focus on her. I have to. If I look down, I’ll get sucked in.

Sleep.

I need sleep.

The damned bleeping from reception continues. Dang, that phone is going wild.

Mom is in motion, hefting another box from her cart. “Meg, don’t just stand there. Grab one. Let’s get these on the table, and I’ll show you what I have.”

“No,” Charlie says, her voice firm. “We have work to do. For our paying clients. This will have to wait.”

Mom whirls. “A murdered eight-year-old and you’re turning your back?”

Oh, boy. Wrong thing to say. I know my sister. If I don’t intervene, this will turn into a…thing.

Familial unrest.

Which isn’t exactly an odd occurrence. For years, my family has operated in a certain way. A certain way that involves Mom and me, the obsessed ones, bonding over cold cases, while Charlie and Dad, the remarkably level-headed and dare I say rational ones, try to talk us down.

The only way to keep this situation under control is to A) allow my mother to show me what is obviously extensive research, and B) get my sister out of here.

I face Charlie, whose expression is solid granite.

Oh. Boy.

“I’ve got this,” I say. “I was about to take a break anyway. I’ll organize it all and walk you through it later.”

“Excellent plan!” Mom beams.

Charlie does her best to ignore our mother. “Meg, you should rest. You’ve been here all night.”

I’m not about to admit that. No sense giving her ammunition.

And then I do the one thing I know I shouldn’t.

I look at the two remaining boxes on the cart. This will be the distraction I need. The perfect excuse to avoid Jerome and his hypothetical suggestion of marriage.

A case, I’ll tell him. Provided by our mother. The nut. It’s almost too perfect. A new task for me to dive into, and hello, he knows when my mother is on a mission there’s no denying her.

Talk about a double-whammy.

I remove the lid from the box. “I’m fine. The distraction will be good.” I wave her off. “Just, you know, keep the coffee coming.”

Charlie gives me ten long seconds of eye contact while Mom grabs the last box from the cart.

“We’re good,” I say. “Really, I’m fine.”

She shakes her head and points. “Two hours. Then you need sleep.”

Good luck, girlfriend . “Sure. No problem. And, please, deal with that phone. I can’t take it.”

“I’ll turn the ringer down and ask Haley to go through the messages. We’ll come up with a plan on how to manage it. Mom, if we lose Haley, you’re helping me beg her to stay.”

“Yada, yada,” our mother says. “Whatever.”

Clearly unhappy with us, my sister spins on her pricey heel and heads to the door.

“Maddening,” she mutters. “The both of you.”

Once Charlie clears out, I turn back to the box, staring down at the contents that nearly spill over the top. “Wow. Mom, what is all of this?”

She edges the box sideways. “That’s box one. I labeled them.”

Of course, she did.

“Witness statements. The Hartmans were having their annual Christmas bash. Two hundred of their closest friends.”

“Two hundred!”

The Hartmans are one of those uber-wealthy D.C. families who aren’t politicians but have enough money to ensure their candidate of choice is elected. Which bodes well for them, since their wealth is built on oil and gas, and they need politicians in their pocket.

“I haven’t been able to put together the complete guest list,” Mom says, “but I’m eighty percent there.”

I lift a manila folder and open it. Inside is a half inch-thick, heavily redacted transcript of an interview with Irene Hartman, the now-deceased matriarch of the family and great-grandmother of the victim.

Some may think my mother is crazy, but she gets shit done. “Mom, how did you get this?”

“I FOIA’d it.”

FOIA. The much-loved Freedom of Information Act allows citizens, particularly journalists, to request copies of records.

And the government is required to release them.

Sure, there are certain exceptions, but for the most part, unless a government entity wants to battle a lawsuit, they have to comply.

My mother loves a good FOIA request.

“Go, Mom.”

Anxious to see what she’s collected, I set the folder on the conference room table and flip through articles and news clippings. A photo of a smiling Tiffany, her two front teeth missing. It’s like a knife to my chest. I set the image aside and … whoa.

“The nine-one-one call,” I say.

“Yes. That’s one of the few that wasn’t redacted. The bastards. Mary Hartman made it. She took over when Irene died.”

That name. I spin it around, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Folder in hand, I step to the doorway. “Charlie!”

“What?” my sister calls from her office.

“Mary Hartman. How do I know that name?”

“One of JJ’s deputies is a Hartman. Mary is his mother. Her brother-in-law, Ron Hartman, runs Hartman Oil and Gas.”

Yes !

I hustle to Charlie’s office and find her behind her desk, pounding away on her laptop. “What’s the deputy’s first name?”

Still typing, she peers up at me. “Alex. JJ likes him. Hard worker. He’s helped out on a few of the cold cases.”

“Mom has a transcript of the nine-one-one call Mary made that night.”

Finally, Charlie stops typing, a sly smile easing across her face. “She FOIA’d it. God bless her. If I weren’t so mad, I’d applaud.”

“She’s got interviews, press clippings, the whole works. Do you think Alex Hartman might talk to us?”

“Well, with a family member being the victim, one would hope.”

“Can you grease the wheels with JJ?”

“That would require talking to him. The Schocks aren’t high on his list right now.”

Ouch.

I scrunch my nose. “Sorry.”

“It’s certainly not your fault.”

I lean against the doorframe. “What if I call him?”

“JJ?”

“He can scream at me all he wants. I don’t have to live with him, so to speak.”

Charlie narrows her eyes, clearly considering this strategy. “He won’t yell at you. He adores you.”

I copy my sister’s sly smile from a minute ago. “Exactly.”

She slides her desk phone in my direction. “Have at it. Let’s see just how mad The Emperor really is.”