Gail Barrett - Fatal Exposure

Brynn’s gaze connected with his. And the compassion in her eyes caused a sliver of warmth to unfurl in his chest. She’d cared about his brother—which begged the question: What role did she have in his death?

But they would discuss Tommy soon enough. He had to fulfill his part of the bargain first.

Steering his mind back to Erin Walker, he flipped to the next photo. Even though he’d braced himself, the close-up view made his stomach clench. How much worse would this be for Brynn?

“You said you met this girl on the streets?” he asked, hoping to distract her from the gore.

“That’s right.”

“Any idea why she ran away?”

Her face still chalky, she managed a shrug. “The same reason they all do, I guess. They’re desperate. Some are neglected or abused. Or their parents have started a second family and don’t want them around. Or sometimes they’ve made a mistake—committed a crime or gotten pregnant—and they’re afraid their parents will go berserk. In Erin’s case, she used drugs.”

“Like Tommy.”

“Yes, like Tommy.” Sympathy softened her eyes. “They’re confused, angry, ashamed. They can’t control their feelings and don’t know how to repair the damage they’ve done. And they don’t think anyone will help.”

Guilt fisted in Parker’s throat. He shifted his gaze to the plate-glass window and stared unseeing at the afternoon rush-hour traffic whizzing past. He and Tommy hadn’t been close. The five-year gap in their ages had kept them apart. When he’d gone off to college, his brother had still been in junior high. But to think that Tommy preferred the violence of street life to asking him for help...

“I tried to help him,” Parker said, his voice low. “I took him to counselors, enrolled him in programs. But nothing worked.” Their battles had only grown more heated until his brother had split for good.

“It’s hard to reach an addict. The chemicals change how they think. I tried to help Erin, too. But in the end I only made things worse.”

“How do you figure that?”

Her eyes turned pained. “I convinced her to go to a shelter, a place I know for teenage girls. She was there for a couple of days, and then her parents picked her up. I thought I’d done the right thing. She told me she wanted to get clean. And her parents had the resources to help her. They got her into that expensive camp.”

“You don’t think you caused her death?”

A bleak look filled her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head. “Maybe not directly. But she’d probably be alive right now if I hadn’t persuaded her to go home.”

He could relate to that. How many times had he second-guessed himself, wishing he’d done something—anything—different with Tommy, something that might have saved his brother’s life?

His gaze stayed on hers. And something shifted inside him, like a long-locked door creaking open to admit the light. And he knew that she understood. She carried the same burden of guilt, the same unending remorse.

Suddenly, his mind flashed back to the image of that scrawny girl standing beside his brother, and he wondered again what had driven her from home.

He tamped down on the question hard. He didn’t need to know Brynn’s life story. He didn’t need to forge a connection with her. And he definitely couldn’t afford to desire her, not when she could be a suspect in his brother’s death.

Although he was beginning to have doubts about that.

Alarmed, he jerked his gaze back to the file. What was he thinking? He was breaking the fundamental rule of police work, letting her get to him. He had to keep his distance, hold on to his objectivity to find out the truth about Tommy’s death.

“Here’s the autopsy,” he said. Still appalled at the direction of his thoughts, he checked the diagnosis at the top. “She died of blunt force trauma, consistent with falling from that tower. The toxicology studies show she’d taken meth.”

Keeping his gaze fastened on the file, he skimmed the various sections of the report—the internal and external exams, the degree of rigor mortis, the evidence taken from the scene.

“Who did the autopsy?” Brynn asked.

“The State Medical Examiner in Baltimore. That’s standard procedure in a case like this.”

“I didn’t see anything about sexual activity.”

“She was twelve.”

“And she’d spent time on the streets.”

True enough. And runaways rarely stayed innocent for long. He flipped back to the internal exam, then checked the diagnosis again. “Here it is. She had scarring consistent with sexual activity. But there was nothing to suggest it was recent—no semen present, no abrasions or inflammation that would indicate a rape.”

He spread his hands. “The cause seems obvious. She was a drug user with meth in her system, and she either jumped or fell from that tower.”

But Brynn didn’t look convinced. “You mind if I look at the file again?”

“Go ahead.” He slid the folder her way. “But there’s no evidence to suggest foul play—no bruising on her neck, no signs of any force. No other footprints around the tower. The surveillance camera was down that night, but even so, the case looks cut-and-dried.”

“She swore she was getting off drugs.”

“So she had a relapse. It wouldn’t be the first time an addict did that.”

“I know. But I still have a feeling...” Pulling the folder closer, she began leafing through the pages again, her delicate brows drawn down.

He understood her reluctance to accept the truth. It was always easier to blame someone else than live with relentless guilt. But unless she had evidence she wasn’t revealing, her suspicions had no basis in actual fact.

Suddenly, she sat upright. He snapped his gaze to hers. “What is it?”

It took her a moment to answer. She thumbed back through the photos again, nibbling her bottom lip. Then she slid a photo toward him. “Did you see this?”

Parker focused on the dead girl’s face. Around her neck she wore a necklace, a silver disk on a matching chain. On it was a design—hearts within a heart. “What about it?”

“It’s not in all the photos for one thing.” She flipped back through several shots. Sure enough, in every other photo, her neck was bare—a detail he couldn’t believe he’d missed.

“Maybe it fell off when they moved her.”

“It isn’t mentioned in the report. It isn’t listed with her personal effects.”

He frowned at that. “You think someone stole it?”

“I don’t know. Why would they? It doesn’t look valuable enough.”

True. It looked like costume jewelry, something a young girl would wear. “Maybe one of her friends kept it as a memento.”

“What friends? She didn’t have any, according to those reports. And that design.” She went back to the necklace again. “See how irregular it is? The lines aren’t even straight. It looks as if she engraved it herself.”

“Maybe she did. Maybe she made it at the camp.”

“Maybe.” Heavy doubt laced her voice. “But I’ve seen something like it before....”

She pulled her laptop from her backpack, placed it on the table and turned it on. Then she opened a folder in her portfolio and started browsing through various shots.

Parker returned to the Walker girl’s file and carefully reread the reports, but Brynn was right. There was no mention of the missing necklace. So where had it gone—and why?

Still not sure it mattered, he switched his attention to Brynn’s computer as she searched her files. Faces paraded past, hundreds of poignant faces of emaciated, runaway kids. Everyone looked tormented. Everyone looked lost. Everyone had that unnerving cynicism in his waiflike eyes.