Page 4 of Whispers Left Behind (Kinsley Aspen #1)

Chapter Four

Alex Lanen October Friday — 8:12 am

The elevator's new-age melody lacked rhythm or soul, and the volume was too high for such a small space. The person in charge of choosing the music should be fired, effective immediately.

Alex hadn’t bothered to remove his sunglasses after entering the station. His head was pounding, his eyes burned, and it was as if someone had taken an ice pick to his right shoulder blade. He was basically suffering the effects of a hangover without the previous night’s enjoyable proclivities.

How was it that he couldn’t pull an all-nighter on a case at the age of thirty-nine? Every muscle in his aching body screamed in protest as he shifted the strap of his workout bag. Starting this afternoon, he was heading back to the gym.

The elevator doors parted, releasing him onto the fourth floor. The homicide division was in its usual morning chaos, and Alex didn’t need to be reminded it was a Friday morning. The rancid odor of tofu had him lifting his forearm to his nose in hopes of staving off the stench.

“Damn it, Haugen!” Alex regretted raising his voice immediately. He stifled a groan before walking around the glass partition separating the hallway from the main bullpen. “I thought your mother-in-law went back home.”

“Next week,” Detective Samuel Haugen replied after wiping his mouth with a napkin. He patted his slightly protruding stomach in satisfaction, reminding Alex that he wasn’t nearly in as rough shape as his colleague. “I might retire, pack my bags, and go with her.”

“Good riddance,” Alex muttered as he walked past the man’s desk.

Sam’s mother-in-law was from Taiwan and came to visit her daughter and grandchildren three months out of the year. It was impossible not to know when she arrived based on the smell of the office every single Friday. The woman was the absolute sweetest, but some of those dishes of hers could curl a man’s toenails.

“Morning, Lanen.”

Alex merely nodded a greeting toward Haugen’s partner, Laura Mitchell. She didn’t bother to take her attention away from her computer, but she had a sixth sense. She had caught his gesture, which was confirmed when she placed one finger on a greeting card and slid it to the edge of her desk.

“It’s Wally’s birthday next week. You and Aspen need to sign the card and pitch in ten.” This time around, Laura stared right at him. “Each.”

Haugen’s laughter followed Alex through the open area after he grabbed the card and headed toward his desk. He and Kinsley had claimed the entire back area through some very clever wagering with two seasoned detectives last year—Dobbs and Crosby. There would be no more poker games until the other two retired from the force.

“You’re in earlier than I expected.” Kinsley didn’t hesitate to reach for the cupholder he carried in his left hand. Considering that she had an addiction to caramel creamer, he always made sure the cups were labeled correctly. “I told the captain you wouldn’t be here until noon.”

The nice thing about having their desks tucked in the back was not just the additional space, but the large whiteboard attached to the wall. With their desks facing one another, the whiteboard was centered perfectly. The position of their workstations also afforded them a side view of the bullpen.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who pulled an all-nighter.” Alex dropped his gym bag to the floor as he scanned the board’s information that she had spent most of the night collecting. “Catch me up, and then we’ll fill in the captain.”

“I drove home and got around five hours of sleep.” Kinsley paused to sip her coffee while raking her gaze over his face. “More than I can say for you. How is it possible to look like shit and not have a strand out of place on that big head of yours?”

Alex refrained from replying that Kinsley shouldn’t talk out of turn. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the stark brightness wasn’t kind to anyone. The pallor of her face wasn’t as noticeable this morning, and the stress lines around her eyes were less pronounced than when she had shown up at last night’s crime scene. She had also changed into one of her usual blazers. The material was more durable than those usually worn in an office setting, yet she still managed to pull off a professional appearance.

Currently, her blazer was slung haphazardly over the back of her chair.

“It’s all in the product, Kin. You’d know that if you ever bothered to walk down that aisle. I also caught a nap in the car while Monica and Bobby separated the field into grids.” Alex’s gaze was once again drawn to the whiteboard. Rachel’s photograph was front and center, and Kinsley had managed to put together quite the timeline. There were also pictures of other people arranged in a horizontal line near the top of the board. “Any chance you figured out who killed Hanson? I wouldn’t mind taking the rest of the day off.”

Alex tossed the greeting card on his desk. He took his time studying the photographs as he shrugged out of his jacket. No one stood out.

Unlike Kinsley, Alex preferred a clean work area. He took his time hanging his jacket on one of the hooks of an old coat rack. He had found the aged piece in the back storage room a couple of years ago, but he was the only one who used it.

Alex reached for the cupholder on her desk before sitting across from her. He removed his coffee before tossing the cardboard holder into the garbage can underneath his desk. If he didn’t help keep her space clean occasionally, her desk would resemble the inside of a dumpster.

“I’m good, but not that good.” Kinsley’s phone must have been set to vibrate. The surface of her desk hummed with an incoming call. She reached out and pressed the side button to stop the annoying reverberations without checking the display. “Rachel Hanson. Twenty-six years old. Married with no children. Works in the finance department over at the car dealership on the west side.”

“The one with that annoying clown commercial?”

“One and the same.” Kinsley frowned and gestured toward him with her coffee cup. “Take those sunglasses off. It’s like I’m talking to myself.”

Alex groaned in protest, but Kinsley was like a dog with a bone when she wanted her way. He had learned over five years ago that life was easier for him when he picked his battles. Since there was a good possibility that Calvin Gantz’s name would be brought up sooner rather than later, sunglasses weren’t part of his battle plan.

“Though the family is originally from Halliday, Hanson’s mother moved her two children to Fallbrook after her divorce ten years ago,” Kinsley explained, but only after Alex had set his sunglasses on his desk. He caught her wince when she noticed his bloodshot eyes. “I broke the news to Louise Baird and her fiancé last night.”

“Not the victim’s husband?”

“Sebastian Hanson was conveniently out of town,” Kinsley replied as she inched her chair backward to open the top drawer of her desk. Within seconds, she was tossing him a small bottle of eye drops. “He drove back to town late last night. We’re slated to speak with him this afternoon.”

“Where was Hanson conducting business?” Alex asked, wondering if the man had enough time to drive or fly home, murder his wife, and return to whatever hotel he was staying at for work. Alex was still reserving judgment on whether Gantz returned to town, but he wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the facts, either. “And did you speak to him over the phone?”

“Bismarck. He’s in sales.” Kinsley tilted her head slightly, acknowledging that an eighty-mile drive was nothing in the grand scheme of things. “Louise Baird called Hanson while I was at her residence. Sebastian and Rachel were high school sweethearts, and Louise had nothing but praise for the man. As far as I could tell, there is no bad blood between the two.”

“Happy marriage?”

“Yes, according to Louise.” Kinsley’s phone vibrated again, but she just as quickly disregarded the call. “She did mention that Rachel was having difficulty becoming pregnant while also pointing out that the delay hadn’t been such a bad thing since Sebastian had just received a promotion.”

“So, the husband didn’t want children?”

“Not sure, but that’s an avenue worth exploring,” Kinsley said as movement from the middle of the bullpen caught their attention. The captain had made an appearance, but he had stopped at Laura’s desk. “I heard downstairs that Hendricks located Rachel Hanson’s car.”

“We had to bring in Izzy to reconstruct the crash.” Alex tensed when the discussion between the captain and Laura became somewhat serious. The way she held her coffee cup gave way to the fact that she was tense. Kinsley’s slight cough brought his focus back around. “It appears as if Hanson was run off the road. The front end of her car was smashed into a tree. No other skid marks were left on the pavement. The car is with impound now. Might be a few days before we get any results, but if the other vehicle left any paint behind, we might have something to go on.”

“Wally make it out to the crime scene?”

“Yes, and he scheduled the autopsy for noon today.”

“Give me a heads up if you decide to request a new partner,” Kinsley replied wryly, snapping Alex’s attention off Laura. He rubbed his eyes and chided himself for such a slip-up. “Something I should know?”

“You want to share with me who you’ve been sending to voicemail?” Alex shot back after downing half his coffee in one shot. Given his lack of sleep, he tempered his irritability as best he could. He began to unscrew the cap on the bottle of eyedrops. “We were able to follow Hanson’s path from her car through the woods. The blood on Hanson’s right side came from shrapnel after the airbag exploded upon impact. There was blood in the car and on some trees where she must have pushed off to help with her momentum.”

“Anything of significance left behind by whoever chased her through the woods?”

Alex relaxed somewhat when Kinsley didn’t push the issue regarding his interest in the captain’s conversation with Laura. He shook his head in response before tilting his head back.

One drop.

Two.

He blinked a few times to clear his vision.

“Nothing except the imprint of his shoes.” Alex noticed their captain approaching and didn’t waste time squeezing the bottle to drop the solution into his other eye. “Eleven and a half, by the way. Not twelve.”

“Not ten and a half, either,” Kinsley quickly countered before smiling at their superior. Not wanting to appear divided in their opinion, he kept to himself that it was common for men to wear shoes of a different size depending on the designer. “Cap, we’re on our way out to speak with Tobias Zayn. He is the grandfather of our victim. She was…”

“Most likely on her way home from visiting him last night when someone intentionally ran her off a back road. Hanson smashed the front end of her car into a tree,” Alex said, filling in the rest of Kinsley’s briefing. They didn’t have much to go on yet, but that would change after some interviews and the findings from the autopsy. “From what we can piece together, the victim ran from the crash site. Her attacker pursued her through the woods toward Lionel Cooper’s property. The chase ended at the barn.”

Captain Dale Thompson tossed a newspaper onto Kinsley’s desk. The frown lines embedded in the man’s forehead had become permanent over the years from the stress of his job. The skin didn’t even so much as smooth out when Thompson was in a good mood, but that was almost certainly due to his overexposure to the sun. Everyone was aware that when Thompson wasn’t at the station, he was either hunting, fishing, or camping.

“I only want one answer.”

Thompson had broad shoulders. If he was having a bad day, it was as if a rod had been inserted into his spine. It was clear he wasn’t in the best of moods this morning. Alex peered down the aisle toward Laura, but she was no longer at her desk.

“Is Gantz back in the city? And spare me the details. It’s a yes or no.”

Kinsley’s phone vibrated on her desk.

“No,” Kinsley replied without consulting Alex. She was fixated on the front page of the newspaper. Oddly enough, it was as if Gantz was staring back at her. Alex closed his eyes, immediately wishing he hadn’t done so. The drops hadn’t done shit. “Someone wants us to believe that Gantz came back to Fallbrook. Muddy the waters, I guess.”

“Lanen?”

“We’ll know more after the autopsy.” Alex was mindful of his words. He stuck to the basic facts, giving Thompson the impression of unity. “Some imprints were left in the dirt just inside the barn. A size larger than Gantz.”

Thompson nodded, seemingly satisfied with that minuscule detail. Given that the man’s shoe size was at least a thirteen, maybe he didn’t have trouble the way Alex did in finding a good fit.

“I like that version, so let’s keep it that way.”

Thompson left the newspaper on Kinsley’s desk as he retreated to his office. Gantz’s mugshot was front and center. The article posed two possible scenarios—had the Fallbrook Killer returned to town, or had the jury been right to acquit Calvin Gantz?

“Let’s go.”

Kinsley abruptly stood before grabbing her blazer. Once she had slid her arms through the sleeves, she opened her desk drawer and withdrew her holster. She clipped it to her belt before picking up her cell phone. She only ever carried a purse when not on duty. Everything she needed during the workday was tucked into a small leather pouch sewn into her phone case.

“We need to grab breakfast on the way.” Alex had spent maybe three seconds debating whether to push the Gantz angle. Whether Kinsley liked it or not, one of them needed to confirm that he hadn’t returned to town. “I haven’t eaten since last night.”

Kinsley’s desk phone rang, and Alex noticed she hesitated to pick up the receiver. If he had to guess, she was avoiding her father’s call. Who else would be so persistent in trying to reach her? Giving her additional time to make her decision, Alex pushed his chair back in an effort to collect his jacket.

“Aspen.” There wasn’t too much of a pause after Kinsley answered the phone, but the way she sought out his gaze meant that it wasn’t her father on the other end of the line. “Would you have someone bring them up? Room Two.”

Kinsley replaced the receiver, but her hand lingered on the phone. Alex’s stomach protested the anticipated change in schedule.

“Looks like Sebastian Hanson made it safely back from Bismarck,” Kinsley revealed, reaching for her weapon. She tucked it safely back inside the drawer. Firearms were prohibited from being worn during interrogations, though Room Two wasn’t necessarily reserved for suspects. It was an area usually meant to provide comfort to witnesses while giving their statements. In this particular case, to put one at ease in hopes that such an illusion caused an individual to speak more freely. “He’s not alone, either.”

“I’m not getting breakfast, am I?”