Page 23 of Crime Lab Cold Case (Pacific Northwest Forensics #2)

The man at the door flicked his hood back from a head of silver hair and growled. “Who the hell are you?”

Natalie put a hand to her throat where her pulse fluttered wildly. “Who are you ? You’re in the ladies’ room.”

“Yeah, because I heard noises in here.”

“Yeah, because it’s a bathroom with running water and everything.” Natalie’s fear was beginning to turn to annoyance.

And then Miles’s broad frame appeared behind the silver-haired man. “Oh, hello, Dr. Volosin. Everything okay in here? Thought I heard someone screaming.”

Dr. Volosin, the DNA lab manager. Natalie narrowed her eyes.

Volosin jabbed a finger at her. “She screamed. Who the hell is she, and what’s she doing near our labs?”

Natalie fired her balled-up paper towel at the trash can and missed. “I’m FBI Special Agent Natalie Brunetti, and I’m in this ladies’ room because the one upstairs near my office is locked.”

“My bad.” Miles patted his chest. “Should’ve warned you, Natalie. The cleaning crew locks up all the bathrooms at night except the ones down here. Everything okay now?”

“Fine. Thanks for checking, Miles.” She bent over and swept the paper towel from the floor.

When Miles left, Volosin leaned his tall, wiry frame against the tile wall. “I thought Nat Brunetti was a man.”

Spreading her arms out to her sides, she said, “Clearly not. Why are you dressed like a burglar?”

He tugged on his hooded sweatshirt. “Just came off a cross-country flight. I dress for comfort after wearing suits at the conference all week. What are you doing here at this hour?”

“I could ask you the same thing. You came straight to the lab from the airport?” She crossed her arms. She felt sorry for Rachelle working for this disagreeable person. Why didn’t he leave?

“After being away all week, I have a lot of work to finish up.” He crossed his arms, mimicking her. “You might’ve heard. The Feds are doing an audit on this lab.”

“Yeah, I had heard. I also heard that you’ve been working at this lab for almost twenty years.”

“That’s right. Long enough to have worked on your cold cases—Collette, David, Lizzie, Aaron, Sierra…and Katie.” Volosin winked and slipped out of the bathroom, leaving her mouth gaping open like a fish’s.

How had he known she was looking into Katie’s disappearance? The others had been on the FBI’s audit notification to the lab, but not Katie. No wonder Rachelle had wanted to meet with her in the lab before Volosin returned, and now, they’d missed their chance.

Natalie left the bathroom without even glancing in the direction of the labs. When she got to the conference room, she checked that everything was in place. Why had Volosin brought up Katie’s case? How had he known?

She’d stayed longer than she’d intended. Ivy would probably be in bed by now. She tapped her phone to call Michael and almost hung up after four rings, but he answered, out of breath. “Are you alright? Did you make it back to the hotel okay?”

“I’m still at the office. How’s Ivy doing? Did she settle down?”

“Fast asleep with Peaches on the floor beside her. We did give her a thorough bath—Peaches, not Ivy—and she looks healthy if a little underweight. No wounds or anything like that. She somehow survived out there before making her way home.” He let out a long, raspy breath.

“I’m not gonna lie. It’s been tough on Ivy having Peaches come back and not her mother. ”

“It must be so confusing for her…and you.” Natalie doodled on the pad in front of her. “Look, Michael. I made an executive decision and called Penny Nguyen about the bracelet, sent her a text with a picture I took.”

“And.” His voice sounded tight, and she hated to add to his distress.

“Penny confirmed that the bracelet is Alma’s. There’s no doubt now that Raine’s murder is linked to the others.” She stopped breathing until he replied.

“I guess that’s it then. I’ll be giving Detective Ibarra an earful tomorrow when I tell him Peaches returned with a dead girl’s bracelet wound around her collar.”

“I was just thinking about that tonight. We really don’t have any proof of anything, do we?”

“We have a photo of Alma’s dead body with a bracelet on her wrist that wasn’t recorded in evidence.

This is exactly what you’re looking at, Natalie.

Someone dropped the ball.” He cleared his throat.

“You’re going to have to come clean, though.

You have to declare your connection to the Katie Fellows’s case because you’ll have to explain how you know the pendant on Sierra Conchas belonged to Katie. ”

“I can’t do that, Michael. I’ll be removed from this investigation, and we’ll never find out what happened. We can work around that bit of information. Sierra’s mother insisted she’d never seen the pendant before, so it must’ve come from the killer.”

“That’s a big leap. Do you want to come over to my place tomorrow when I call Detective Ibarra? I’m sure he’s going to want to come by to look at the dog and ask questions. We can lay things out for him then.”

“I was supposed to meet Rachelle in the DNA lab tomorrow, but her boss, Dr. Volosin, came back tonight. Do you know if Rachelle is coming in tomorrow, or is she still sick?”

“I haven’t heard from her yet. So you met Phil Volosin.”

“He came straight to the lab from the airport.”

“He does that a lot.”

“He’s obnoxious.”

Michael chuckled. “He can be abrasive, but he does a good job. He was the keynote speaker at that conference.”

“And yet…” Natalie clicked her tongue. “He was at the forensics lab when all these issues occurred.”

“I don’t believe any of the issues involved DNA testing. There might’ve been DNA samples missing, but that would’ve happened before they reached Volosin’s lab.”

“If you say so.” Natalie stood up and stretched. “I’ll let you go. You must be exhausted.”

“Send me a quick text when you get back to the hotel.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll have another brake failure?”

“You never know.”

Natalie ended the call and left the conference room. She sailed through the lobby and waved at Miles on her way out as he clicked the lock open for her. The parking lot had fewer cars than when she’d arrived.

As she made the short drive back to her hotel, the skies opened, and rain spattered against her car. She parked as close as she could to the hotel entrance and made a run for the lobby, holding her bag over her head.

The front desk clerk called to her as she made a beeline to the elevator.

“Ms. Brunetti, you have a message.”

A message? She glanced at her phone clutched in her hand. Had Michael tried to reach her on her cell phone? Nope. Battery fully charged, no messages.

She shifted course and veered toward the front desk. “A telephone message?”

“It’s actually a written note, or at least something in an envelope. Somebody left it on the counter earlier this evening.” He handed her a small white envelope with her name written on it in a childish scrawl.

Something about that handwriting made her skin tingle, and she took the envelope with a trembling hand. Inserting her thumb between the flap and the envelope, she ripped it open.

She plucked out the folded sheet of paper and read the words.

Nat, meet me in our regular spot tonight. Luv ya, Katie.

The i in Katie’s name had a heart for the dot, just like Katie used to write it. The words blurred together, and she gripped the edge of the counter.

“Is everything okay, Ms. Brunetti?” The front desk clerk’s face crumpled with worry.

Pinching the note between two fingers, she held it up. “Who left this?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know. It was sitting on the counter when I started my shift at five. I recognized your name and put it by my computer, so I wouldn’t forget it when you walked in.” His gaze darted to the envelope. “Is there a problem?”

“No, but I’d really like to know who left this. You must have cameras in here. Can I look at the footage?” Even she could recognize her hysterical tone, and the clerk’s eyebrows were climbing higher and higher on his forehead.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we can’t allow guests to view our security footage. If there was a crime committed, if someone threatened you, we can get the police involved. They can request the footage.”

“N-no crime. Just a note from…an old friend. I wanted to see if it was really her.”

“If anything changes, ma’am, I’ll be happy to get the police involved.” He held up one finger. “And you can ask our day clerk, Daria. I believe she’s working tomorrow.”

“Thanks—” her gaze dropped to his nametag “—Ben. Maybe I’ll talk to Daria.”

Ben pasted the smile back on his face. “I’ll give her a heads-up.”

Natalie nodded and walked to the couch in the lobby on shaky legs.

This had to be some kind of cruel joke. Had Zane done this?

Did he really blame her for Katie’s disappearance?

Who else knew her identity? Did Dr. Volosin put two and two together.

He was here at the lab when Katie disappeared.

Would he have remembered the scared teen who’d narrowly escaped a similar fate that night?

She flattened out the note on her knee. She knew where their regular spot was.

She’d been there earlier in the week. A swing set and slide sat at the entrance to the campsite near Devil’s Edge Trail.

She and Katie used to meet on the swings or up the stairs at the top of the slide.

They’d even scratched their names into the metal of the slide.

Tonight. Someone wanted to meet her there tonight. Who knew about that meeting place? Who knew Katie put a heart over the i in her name? Had Katie returned? Maybe she had been a runaway all this time.

She wouldn’t go alone. Not this time. Not that place.

She tapped Michael’s number, and he picked up after the first ring. “You didn’t have to call. Just a text, but I’m happy to hear your voice again.”

And she was happy to hear his voice. The low, firm timbre made her feel grounded.

“When I got back to the hotel, the clerk had a note for me at the reception desk. It was a note from Katie telling me to meet her in our regular spot tonight. Handwriting looked like hers, including a particular quirk.”

“Someone’s playing a prank on you, Natalie. Could it be Katie’s teenage boyfriend?”

“Zane? I thought about that, but doesn’t seem to be his style. He came right to the hotel to talk to me face-to-face. Someone else must know my identity, Michael.”

“Where is this meeting spot?”

“Entrance to the Devil’s Edge campsite—the playground equipment.”

He sucked in a breath. “You’re not considering it, are you?”

“I am if you come with me. Even if it’s a prankster, I want to know who it is and why he’s doing this.”

“Okay, I’m closer to Devil’s Edge than you are. Drive to my place and we’ll go over in my car.”

“Whoever wrote that note is not going to be there if I come with backup. You need to stay out of sight.”

He growled. “I’ll stay out of sight, but you’d better be strapped.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She pushed up from the couch. “Separate cars. We come in the same way as the night we met. I’ll park in the lot for the campsite, and you park in the pull-out for the trail and come in that way.”

“Give me a head start. I want to be on that trail by the time you reach the parking lot. Hopefully, this rain will let up. That trail is nasty when it’s wet.”

“You leave now.” She strode toward the elevator. “I’ll go up and change clothes.”

Fifteen minutes later, she’d changed into dark jeans, a black jacket and hiking boots. She texted Michael to make sure he was already on his way, and then she hopped in her car.

Before the turnoff for the campsite parking lot, Michael texted that he was at the trailhead and ready to go. Natalie’s shoes scrunched over the soupy gravel of the parking lot, its one light trying valiantly to illuminate every corner. It failed.

Natalie’s gaze swept the empty parking lot through the windshield wipers sluicing rain from her windshield in a rhythmic pattern that seemed to say “go back, go back.”

But she wasn’t a foolish teenager this time. She’d failed Katie before, but she wouldn’t allow that to happen again. She flicked up the hood of her jacket and placed one booted foot on the ground, then grabbed a flashlight and patted her weapon in her pocket.

She had no intention of creeping around like a scared rabbit. She called out in a loud voice. “Hello? Who’s out there? What kind of game are you playing?”

Drops of rain trickled from the edge of her hood and sprinkled her face. The chain on one of the swings whined, and she jerked her head around. A light breeze ruffled the tips of the leaves and pushed at the swing again, as if there was a phantom person sitting in it.

Katie used to love the swings.

Despite herself, Natalie whispered her friend’s name.

Then she stamped her feet and shook the rain off her jacket. This person wanted to get under her skin, wanted her to feel uneasy. They’d succeeded.

“Hello! You wanted this meeting. You got it.” Could Michael hear her inane yelling? She sure as hell hoped so.

As she passed the swing set, she grabbed the chain on one swing, pulled it back and released it, sending the seat dancing back and forth.

She marched to the slide and grabbed the slippery handrail.

The metal steps clanged with each tread to the top of the slide.

The familiar covered platform beckoned, and she ducked to take a seat in the space, which was big enough for two to huddle within its confines.

Lowering her body, she leaned her back against one rounded side. She flicked her flashlight over the graffiti and scratches on the inside of the cover until she found the names—Katie and Nat. Only Katie’s name was scratched out.

A breath hitched in Natalie’s throat and as she reached out to trace the names, flakes of paint came off on her fingertips. As she let out a stifled sob, a loud clang reverberated in the small space, deafening her.

The next pop sounded more familiar. Someone was shooting at her.