Page 58 of The Last Close Call

“Yes,” he said. “But not the one you’re thinking.”

She focused her attention on his eyes—which didn’t really help. They were deep and dark, and the intensity in them put a flutter inside her. She liked that intensity. But it worried her, too, because she was starting to realize it applied to everything he did. His work, his cases, his relationships. His whole low-key demeanor was an act. Or maybe not an act, but a layer that most people didn’t see past. He only seemed low-key and sounded low-key. But in reality this man was super focused on getting what he wanted.

She cleared her throat. “So... not the case I’ve been working on?”

He shook his head, still watching her closely. “This is a cold case. As in ice-cold.”

“Tell me more.”

The second the words were out, she felt a twinge of panic, and the feeling was only reinforced when she saw the flare of triumph in his eyes.

“I’m not saying I’ll do it,” she added. “I just want to know what it is.”

“Fair enough.” He rested his forearms on his knees, Mr.Casual, and she knew that was an act, too. Whatever this was was important to him.

“Eight years ago I got a middle-of-the-night callout to a park on the east side of town,” he said. “Ashland Park.”

“Over off Manor Road.”

“You know it?”

“Sure, I used to have a friend who lived over there. That was before the area got gentrified and all the rents went up.”

“Someone called 911 about a body in one of the bathrooms. Hispanic male, probably early twenties. He’d been bludgeoned to death with a blunt object.”

She shuddered. “How horrible.”

“No ID.”

Dread started to sink in as she realized where this was going.

“You want me to identify him? Using DNA?”

“We did, actually,” Jack said. “That’s where it gets even worse. Turns out, this victim was only seventeen years old. He’d been arrested before on drug charges, and his prints were in the system. Ramon Huerta.”

The way he said the name, she could tell it had significance to him.

“Did he have any family or—”

“He’d been in foster homes since he was six. Mom was a junkie, Dad was nowhere. By the time this kid died, he was basically an addict who’d been getting by on the street. It was one of those cases. I’ve seen it so many times, but...” He shook his head. “This time was different.”

“Why?”

He looked down and rubbed the back of his neck. “I found the brick.”

“The brick?”

“The murder weapon. Someone smashed his skull with a brick, and I found it by the playscape right there in the park.” He paused. “I mean, this victim was still pretty much a kid himself, and someone—maybe his dealer or someone who stole his stash from him—bashed his skull in.” Jack leveled a look at her. “I’ve never been able to stomach it.”

“How he died, you mean?”

“That, yeah. But also not being able to figure it out.” He shook his head. “This was my first homicide case, and we never arrested anyone. We never even had a damn suspect.”

Rowan’s chest tightened as she watched him. Clearly this case, and his inability to solve it, had been weighing on him for years.

“So... you’re opening the case again?”

“It’s never really been closed, just de-prioritized.”

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