Page 14 of Tears on Her Grave

“Yeah.” Jenna fastened her seatbelt and arranged her things in the center console. “It’s been a long time, but as you said, parents could be keeping things as a shrine to their son. I’m hoping they have, and we’ll find evidence inside the truck or his bedroom to help us find out who killed him.”

Starting the engine, with rain pouring down the windshield and the wipers increasing speed to cope with the deluge, Kane turned the Beast toward Main. “It’s a longshot but it’s all we’ve got right now. Although most parents see their kids in a different light to what they really are.”

“How so?” Jenna turned to look at him.

Kane slowed down to negotiate a large puddle of water across the blacktop. He smiled as a three-year-old wearing brightyellow rubber boots and a red raincoat ran along the sidewalk in front of their mother, jumping in the puddles. The child looked completely oblivious to the fact that he was soaked through. The bedraggled mother pushing a stroller hurried after him. The scene brought back memories of times with him and his sister when they did the exact same thing and got themselves into trouble.

They stopped outside Mrs. Peters’ home and dashed through the pouring rain to the front porch. The driveway squelched under foot. Changing his boots for a pair of thick lined rubber boots and two pairs of thermal socks had been a good idea. Splashing through puddles, Kane followed Jenna up the steps. The door flew open and Mrs. Peters stared at them, her mouth hanging open.

“Have the DNA tests come back yet? Is it my Cole?” Mrs. Peters looked from one to the other, a terrified but expectant look in her eyes.

Kane exchange a meaningful glance with Jenna and reached for his phone. “They hadn’t when we left the office, but I’ll see if they’ve been uploaded onto the server.”

“The medical examiner does require a positive DNA sample to identify Cole, but from all the evidence that we have already, I am certain that it’s him.” Jenna moved closer to Mrs. Peters. “My aim is to discover who did this to him and I need your help.”

“How can I help you? I don’t know anything.” Mrs. Peters stepped back into the passageway and waved them inside. “I spoke to my husband last night and we tried to recall every detail, but we haven’t come up with anything new.”

After scanning the files and the positive ID that Wolfe had uploaded earlier that morning, Kane gave Jenna a slight nod and pushed his phone back inside his pocket. “I’m afraid that the sample you gave us came back as a positive match to the victim. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“We’ve always hoped he’d come back one day, but deep down inside I knew that was false hope. Whatever the reason he left, he would never have given up football. When he didn’t show after the draft pick, we believed he was gone.” Mrs. Peters’ eyes filled with tears. “This makes it so final, but at least now we can lay him to rest.” She straightened as if gathering herself. “Now what can I do to help you find this monster who killed my son?”

“Did you by any chance keep his room intact?” Jenna’s expression was hopeful. “And what about his truck? Did you sell that or do you still own it?”

“His room is exactly the same as when he walked out on that Halloween night to meet Abby.” Mrs. Peters looked from one to the other. “I always expected him to walk back through the front door. Same with his truck. It’s in the garage and hasn’t been touched since we found it in the parking lot near the forest ranger’s station.”

This might be the breakthrough they wanted, but they couldn’t rush into this as they needed more information about Cole. “Before we take a look, can you give me more information about his relationship with Abby? Did they get along or did they fight a lot?”

“He was infatuated with her and what young man wouldn’t be? She was a beautiful girl.” Mrs. Peters went to the mantel in the family room and beckoned them inside. “Look at all these photographs of them together. They made a perfect couple. Abby was a delight and never had a bad bone in her body. She doted on Cole and planned to move to wherever the draft sent him. To be honest, from what Cole said to me, I honestly envisaged him asking her to marry him once they knew he was literally set for life.” She shook her head. “I don’t recall them ever fighting. They started off as friends in high school and that blossomed when she joined the cheerleading squad. I can’t imagine whyanyone would have wanted to kill them. They minded their own business and did nothing to hurt or annoy anyone.”

“There are people on this earth who are jealous of others’ happiness.” Jenna met the woman’s gaze. “Then there are others who just kill when the opportunity arises. You’d be aware of the murders that happened in this town over the last few years. None of them actually make any sense. They were all part of the killer’s deluded fantasies.”

“Well, go upstairs. His room is the third on the left.” Mrs. Peters sighed. “I keep the door closed now because it brings back too many sad memories. His laptop is there and also his phone. We found that in the center console of his truck, so he must have left it behind that night.” She tapped her chin, thinking for a beat. “I recall him taking the flashlight from the kitchen before he left that night, and we didn’t find it in the truck. You will know it if you find it because it’s metal and has the name Peters engraved on the side. It used to be in my husband’s toolbox and was forever being borrowed by one person or another.”

Kane added that information to his notebook and followed Jenna up the stairs.

FOURTEEN

A knot tightened in Kane’s belly. He found it disturbing, almost intrusive, to walk into a dead person’s room, more so when it was a young person whose life was cut off midstride. He scanned the room, taking in the football posters from twelve years previously. Pennants and images of him and Abby were plastered everywhere. Trophies crammed three sets of shelves. This young man was not only good at football, he excelled across many sports. He played baseball, won trophies in track and field, and was proficient in swimming as well. Kane’s attention was drawn to a collection of gun trophies and he discovered Cole was at competition level in rifle. He turned to look at Jenna. “What a terrible waste of life. This young man had everything going for him, didn’t he? I wonder who took it into their head to kill him. If this was a serial killer, surely there would be others going missing around the same time. Was this an opportunistic thrill kill?”

“As the sheriff didn’t bother to keep his files up to date, we have no idea.” Jenna made a beeline for the laptop, pulling on gloves along the way. “I guess we should avoid contaminating the room, even though it isn’t technically a crime scene.” She followed the power cord and turned it on at the wall. “Let’s see ifthis boots up after all this time.” She pointed to the phone sitting on the desk. “Can you hunt down a charger? Maybe it’s in one of the drawers.”

For a college student, Cole was incredibly tidy, unless his mother had cleaned the room after he’d left. The bed was made and there was not a speck of dust to be seen anywhere. He gathered that Cole spent a good deal of his time in the fraternity house and maybe came home on weekends. Halloween that year just happened to fall on a Friday. Kane opened drawers and found the phone charger. He attached the phone and plugged it in. It was an old phone and would likely take over an hour or maybe more to recharge. It seemed that the laptop was in good shape. It was slow to boot up but hummed along nicely and opened up usingAlpha Pias the password. “That was a good guess.” He leaned over Jenna’s shoulder, staring at the old screen.

“Ah, emails.” Jenna slowly scrolled through them one at a time. “I’ll take a quick look, but we’ll need to take these back to the office and go through them. We need to spend time searching the room.”

Kane straightened. “Although it’s so clean it’s hard to imagine he even lived here.”

He opened closet doors to find a variety of normal gear. Dumped in one corner of the closet was a duffel bag and he hauled it out to take a look inside. The bag was filled with dirty laundry. This would be the reason the room was so clean. No doubt his mother would have come in and dusted but Cole must have dropped in before he left to pick up Abby. He dumped his bag in the closet and likely forgot to tell his mother. If she had found it after he’d gone missing, perhaps she was reluctant to open it or destroy the last few things her son had touched. He recalled asking Wolfe about what had happened to his things as he didn’t have even one small reminder of his wife. Wolfetold him that, as he’d reportedly been killed in the accident, all his belongings had been moved into storage. It was a military storage unit and the items would be there for at least ten years before he would be able to access them if necessary. One thing that always bothered him was the fact that he had never been able to speak to his father or mother before they died. His going dark had been absolute, much the same as Jenna’s, but she didn’t have any family that he knew about to care where she’d ended up. Her parents died before she became an FBI agent.

He scanned the walls, his gaze moving over the photographs. It seemed that he printed many from his phone. One in particular caught his eye. It was a group of six young men. Cole was the center, with both arms resting on the other young men’s shoulders. All were wearing football jerseys, and the Alpha Pi fraternity pins were evident on everyone’s chest. He took the photograph from the wall and placed it on the desk beside Jenna. “I do believe I found the group of friends that went up the mountain on Halloween. This image doesn’t denote anything particularly special apart from a group of friends out having fun. This might be the clue we’ve been looking for.”

“There’s not much to and fro in the emails, mainly college stuff and information from various places offering Cole work over the breaks.” Jenna blew out a long breath. “There’s too much here to go through. He has hundreds of emails piled up. My bet is anything interesting will be on his phone. Not many people email their friends and that’s who we need to speak to—and Abby’s. It’s a shame we were never able to find her phone. My bet it would be in the cave where they were buried or somewhere close by, although were phones water resistant those days? I have no recollection of smartphone functionality twelve years ago. It’s not something I worry about too much.”

Kane chuckled. “Me neither. I’m usually just impressed how many things the phone can do these days. It seems every newmodel has something I desire greatly and need to buy right away. Often during my missions I was literally a guinea pig for some of the new technology in weapons and armor. I never minded and enjoyed giving anything they gave me a thorough workout. I figure Wolfe is much the same as me. He has every possible innovation in his laboratory that POTUS offers to send him. He has things there that are usually sent out only to military doctors for evaluation. This is how he had the special laser to alter my fingerprints.” He sighed. “I haven’t found anything of interest apart from the photograph and the duffel full of unwashed clothes in the corner of the closet. I didn’t believe this room looked lived in by a college student, and seeing the duffel would mean he came home to say hello to his folks, dumped his dirty washing, and took off to meet Abby.”

“I would agree because his mom would have cleaned his room while he was away for the week at college.” Jenna stood slowly and placed one hand on her rounded belly. “The baby is very active today, especially when I sit down. I’m coming to the conclusion it has very large feet.” She gave him a long stare and then chuckled. “I do believe big feet come from your side of the family.”

Kane collected the laptop and phone. “Only on the male side. My mother was dainty.”

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