Page 11 of Fragments of the Past

“And let’s be real, you cannot be the first girl Anson has picked up at a bar who has given him a false name or wrong number.” Layla fans her fingers. “Hell, the digits I gave Julian when we met were for a restaurant I waitressed at that had gone out of business. He had to chase me down to get my real number. He had to prove he was interested in me, not just drunkenly sing a verse from an Eric Clapton song off-key that a million other guys had already tried to pick me up with.” She lets out an exaggerated groan. “Anson was good to you in the sack, and he was professional towards you and the family at the walkthrough, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then what difference does it make if you never see this man again?”

Because as much as I didn’t want to be me that night, I liked who he was.I think.

Anson should have left me and my dead cell phone sitting in the gutter, which is exactly how I expected him to react. But not only did he have the humanity to get me food at the diner before I passed out, he also had the professional courtesy to drop me off at my apartment afterwards, and he waited for me to get safely inside.

I’ve spent the past several days dwelling on every interaction we had. Overthinking whether my defensiveness was justified or if I was overcompensating with the barrage of fucks I let loose on Anson because I was oversensitive. Overstimulated. What if I hadn’t been so prickly? Not that I’d behave like a doormat.

I’ve gotta move on and stop letting Anson live rent-free in my head. Angeline kept me in the loop, updating me on how her case unfolded after we worked together. Pearl’s mother left a thank you in my voicemail. Anson had to have given Mrs. Turner my number. I haven’t heard a thing from him, and it’s going to remain that way.

I fiddle with a sealed cup of lobster claw clasps, unwilling to part with the answer on the tip of my tongue. The real me would’ve scared Anson off, but not letting him see who I really am did the same thing.

It’s under my skin because I want more of something I can’t have.

“I guess you’re right,” I begrudgingly admit. It doesn’t make a difference because I won’t hear from Anson Ames again.

“One last question: Was Detective Ames as hot as he looked in the picture?”

“Yes.” I laugh, fanning my cheeks.

“Figured. The hot ones always leave scorch marks. Or beard burn.” Layla shrugs with a wink.

She plucks a vibrant orange sunstone with a vein of red running through it from the open box of gemstones to admire. Then she moves the thick gauged wire and pliers onto my self-healing craft mat. “This color is selling out as fast as we’re stocking it. Paisley wants more.”

Chapter Six

________________

ANSON

“I’ve been meaning to ask…” Chaim, my superior officer, wiggles a pen over his desk. The ends hit his blotter, making a rapidtick-tick-ticking, and tiny ink stabs appear. “That psychic chick turn up any new leads?”

He stops, clicks the end, closing the pen, and chucks it into the holder. Then he pushes back in his chair. His ass doesn’t do that balancing act in the seat. There’s not enough room between his desk and the bookshelf cramped behind it to recline. It’s more of a closet than an actual office. A place the powers that be stuck him because his years of service afford Chaim a level of privacy I haven’t reached.

My desk is among the other detectives; homicide, narcotics, and computer crimes. When I have to walk down a hall for a face-to-face with Chaim, I stand the entire time since there’s no room for a second chair in his hidey-hole.

The few of us—Okay, thetwoof us, Chaim and me—assigned to split Brighton P.D.’s unsolved missing persons and cold cases understand that, like any police department, we’re understaffed and woefully under-funded. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve got cement blocks tied to our legs and are swimming through unsolved murders. But it’s something the Chief of Police claims they’re aiming to change.

The public uproar after the Pruitt case was bad fucking press for the town of Brighton. Proof won out. Except, cameras and conjecture went unchecked. It left a lot of citizens under the impression that inept small-town cops assigned to cases over a decade ago are why those girls weren’t found here sooner.

Not that every officer, in every town, who worked those cases doesn’t have their own regrets. In hindsight, everyone is wondering how the victims remained hidden so close by. What evidence was missed. What anyone could have done better, differently, from the onset.

Reality is, even working with other jurisdictions, there wasn’t the access to forensic experts or the advanced technologies we have today. Time marches on. Technology changes. States are working diligently to get the backlog of offender fingerprints and DNA samples from convicted felons into CODIS. The scope and the backlog of information are immense. But, with any luck, eventually searching those databases should crack remaining cases and stop many from going unsolved in the future.

Until then, we keep at it.

Chaim’s and my time get split. The men and women we investigate ongoing crimes with are dedicated. They take pride each and every time they don’t have to hand files off to us. Can you blame them for wanting to do great police work? I can’t.

Not after Pruitt.

Leaning cross-legged against the doorjamb to his office, I grab my jaw with my thumb and forefinger, moving it back and forth to test how sensitive it is.

While I’ve kept what went down at Sweet Caroline’s quiet, my life since meeting Rae Lee Chatham has been an utter disaster. I’d gone the following morning for a filling only for the dentist to discover the molar needed a root canal and crown. That afternoon, a private investigator in Goldsboro sidetracked me. Try as I may over the weekend, every time I sat on the couch to watch a game, my attention span vanished. All I could think of was the way Rae Lee’s body felt against mine.

I think she put some voodoo hex on me because I lost the TV remote every time I put it down, and my phone and keys magically disappeared more than usual. Not to mention, this morning my laptop bag wasn’t in the spot where I normally leave it in the kitchen. It somehow got tucked in the corner alongside my shoe rack at the door.I never leave my computer by the door.I wound up skidding into the dentist’s parking lot, five minutes late for the root canal.

---