5

Last night had ended okay, and Donovan was a lot calmer this morning. He’d worked through his irrational fear, and I saw him emotionally preparing to get in touch with the mother and daughter. I was incredibly proud of him. He’d been through a lot, my Donovan, but he wasn’t the type to let anything stall him. He knew he had my absolute support, whatever he chose to do, and I could tell he felt stronger because of it.

I didn’t push him to do anything right away, as he should have the grace to do things when he was ready. Instead, we went to work. I sat in my office like a good little mentor, all the while trying to catch Abby up on everything she needed to know. Donovan had squirreled himself into the corner of our office, dealing with emails based on all the typing.

Abby was a pleasure to work with. She was eager to learn, studious, and had a wonderful personality. I wanted her to succeed in life with every fiber of my being. I also wanted her to be safe, much safer than I had been pre-Donovan, hence the need for this particular lesson.

Abby sat in the chair in front of me and made the two-finger H sign against her chest. “Like this?”

“That’ll work. Donovan can pick up on it.”

“Okay, so I use help for…what?”

“Anything. Everything. The help sign is for when things are going down and you need him, but you’re trying to not be obvious about it.”

“Got it. And the T sign is for a heads-up?”

“Basically. It’s not that trouble is incoming, it’s because you see the potential for it.”

She nodded and made a note. Abby was a visual learner, much like me, so writing everything down helped it stay in her head.

Without turning around, Donovan pitched in, “Most cops will know these signs. Especially the ones who work with Jon on a regular basis, they’ve picked up on them. So it’s not just me you can use them with.”

Abby jotted that down too, her lines looking a little relieved. “Sounds great. I don’t want to take you away from Jon if he needs you.”

Oh. I guess she’d been worried about that. “Naw, don’t worry. Donovan’s perfectly capable of protecting two people at once. In fact, he can even be in two places at once.”

Now this, Donovan turned at. He gave me an exasperated look. “What am I, Superman?”

“You’re not?” He was so fun to tease.

I wasn’t completely kidding, though.

A single rap sounded on the office door and our receptionist, Marcy, stuck her head in. “Detective Borrowman is here, and he said he’s got case files for you. I put him in the conference room.”

“Yes! Thanks, Marcy.” Finally, we could get started on our case.

“For which person?”

I stood, already feeling antsy and ready to dive in. “Our client. Dwayne Evans.”

“Yes!” Abby popped up like I had, already beelining for the conference room. “I want him out soon.”

“Me too, kiddo. Me too.”

Donovan followed right on our heels, but interestingly enough, Borrowman was halfway in Carol’s doorway, asking her to join us. If he was asking for her, then there was something wonky going on here. More than I already knew, anyway.

Borrowman had been on a weight loss journey, and I could tell it was working since he appeared trimmer. I think he’d gotten a haircut recently, too, as his dark hair was gelled. He looked sharp in his dark navy suit and well rested.

“Borrowman.”

He turned, giving me a wave. “Hey, Bane. Oh, who’s this?”

“This is Abby, my apprentice.”

“Ah-ha,” he intoned, offering a hand to her. “We meet at last. I’ve heard lots of things about you, Abby.”

“Me too.” She shook hands, a delighted smile on her face, but then, she knew in a glance Borrowman was good people. She’d dressed for work today in a jean skirt and white button-down, but I could tell Borrowman saw a teenager, not a psychic on the job. “Nice to finally meet you. Will you help us with Dwayne’s case?”

“That’s the goal. I understand you were the one who first spotted him?”

“I was.” Abby’s chest thrust out. She was very proud of herself.

As she should be.

We congregated in the conference room, and that was when I had to sigh. There were at least eight boxes full of evidence and reports, all waiting to be gone through. I wanted Dwayne out of prison, I really wanted that, but looking at this mountain of paperwork to slough through made me want to binge watch a show or something.

Abby hadn’t seen a full case record yet and she stopped dead in her tracks. “ All that’s case related?”

“Yup. Got a few more boxes in the car, actually.”

“I can give you a hand,” Donovan offered, to the surprise of no one.

“Sure. Let’s haul them in.”

Abby looked like she’d just been given a final project, due in two days, with no warning or prep. Which was pretty much the case.

I put an arm around her shoulders and guided her to a chair. “Here’s the thing they never accurately show on TV. Crimes produce paper. All the paper. Boxes and boxes of paper. A small case will produce about a thousand pages of reports.”

The way Abby looked at me, she really, really wanted me to be exaggerating. Her eyes pleaded for me to stop joking.

“I wish I was kidding, but that’s the fact of it. I kinda expected this much to go through, but…” I looked around at the boxes, knowing more were coming, and sighed from the depths of my tired soul. “It’s going to take a while. Fortunately, we have a team of people to do it.”

Borrowman and Donovan came back, Donovan carrying three boxes to Borrowman’s one because he was sexy and strong that way. I loved it when he did something like this and I could watch all those lovely muscles flexing. Yum.

Whoops, better stop, couldn’t be drooling over him in the office.

Carol came out of her office at a speed walk, dress flapping around her ankles as she moved. She wore heels to offset her short stature, and she was actually wearing makeup today and had attempted to tame her brown curls. Ohhh, in her lines I saw she had a date later today. Made more sense why she was so dressed up.

“Carol, they tell you anything about this?” Borrowman asked as he set the box down on one of the only clear spots on the table.

“Basics. Dwayne’s innocent of the crime, and we’re working a cold case. Pretty much all I got.” She huffed bangs out of her face and sighed. “I really need a haircut. Anyway, can I have a CliffsNotes version?”

Abby perked up as well.

“I didn’t work this case, so CliffsNotes is about all I can offer.” Borrowman sat at the head of the table, a resigned air about him. His line of determination pulsed, growing stronger. “First thing, this case was Solomon’s.”

Carol groaned and flopped over the table. “Noooooo.”

“Sorry. I’m not thrilled either.”

I’d been sidetracked before I could fully fill Abby in on Solomon, so I did that now. “We have a long, long history with Detective Solomon and none of it is good. He’s the type who grasps at straws and leaps to conclusions, so most of the cases he’s worked end with him arresting the wrong person. Usually, someone is able to untangle the mess and let the innocent party go, but not always. That’s how we have situations like Dwayne’s.”

Abby’s expression twisted up into a disgusted scowl. “And they let him keep his job?”

“We’re pretty sure he has dirty pictures of someone’s wife.” Donovan sighed gustily before prodding Borrowman. “What else do you know?”

“Bit of information about the victim.” Borrowman flipped through his own notes as he spoke, the yellow pad rustling as he went from one page to the next. “Tylesia Evans, aged twenty-three, never been in a romantic relationship. She’d been her brother’s anchor from the age of eighteen, they went to the same college, and she had a job in the same department as him. They lived together. She was, by all accounts, an amazing person. She volunteered as a life coach at a women’s shelter on her off time. Truthfully, the evidence on this was weird. There were hateful texts between brother and sister, but they only showed up on the victim’s phone, not on Evans’s. GPS showed he went from house to river, but his work colleagues insisted Evans was there all morning from seven-thirty until arrest. Security video from his workplace was dismissed because Evans is a Coder and thereby able to mess with it.”

I blinked. “Uhh…something’s really weird with the picture you’re telling me. Dwayne mentioned to us that he didn’t lose the bond with his sister until hours after he was arrested.”

“Huh. Now that’s interesting information too. Means she was alive until that point. One of my main issues with this case was how circumstantial it all was. This is why I called in Carol.” Borrowman lifted a finger, grinning. “The victim’s body was never found.”

Oooooh. “A missing body could make the case for us.”

“It could indeed. Carol?”

“Oh, I’m all over this.”

“I’ll be your witness.”

“Please and thank you.”

I made a snap decision to include Abby. It would be good experience for her. “Can we join in?”

“Let’s make it a party,” Carol invited.

Excellent.

I ushered Abby up and over into Carol’s workroom. It contained a gigantic map, crystals all over the place, and the other paraphernalia she used to focus. She had six chairs lining the wall for whenever we needed to use them.

I’d explained to Abby before how when we looked for evidence using psychic ability, we had to have an officer of the law as a witness that no hanky-panky was going on. This was the first time she’d see it in action because we’d been primarily doing a lot of interviews and practice.

Abby hadn’t spent a ton of time around Carol before now, but as a Reader, she also didn’t do the awkward getting-to-know-you phase. She dove right in with her usual candor. “Miss Carol, can I ask questions?”

“Sure.” Carol paused in setting up her crystals to give Abby a quick smile. “I can do this in my sleep.”

“Cool. So you’re obviously looking for the body. What all do you need to do that?”

“A name normally suffices. If it exceeds my comfortable range, then something else to boost helps. Something that belonged to the victim, or a picture of them.”

Borrowman pulled out a picture from the file in his hand and passed it to her. I caught a glimpse of it as it was passed over. Tylesia had been a very pretty woman. Oval-shaped face, hair in a short pixie cut, her eyes more golden than brown. She was laughing in the picture, a puppy licking her jawline. “She could be hundreds of miles from here, so I figured a picture would help.”

“Oooh, yes.” Carol accepted the picture, put it squarely in the middle of her table, and then cracked her neck from side to side. “I think I’m ready to start.”

Borrowman leaned over to turn her camera on. Yes, I was on the opposite side of the room from said camera.

We went through the spiel of time, date, and license numbers for everyone. Then Carol flicked her fingers and really got to work. I could tell from her lines and her expression that she was one hundred percent focused.

Said focus also only lasted one second, then she pulled back with a growing frown that beetled her eyebrows together. “Um. Guys, this is weird.”

“I don’t like weird.” I said this with conviction. “Weird causes problems.”

“Trust me, I know. But I can’t find her.”

Her statement hung in the air for a moment, like a joke that had fallen flat.

“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” Borrowman asked, probably hoping she was kidding. “You can find anyone.”

“I’m not entirely infallible,” Carol retorted, leaning back from the table. She still wore a puzzled frown. “If someone’s been cremated and their remains scattered to the four winds, I can’t point to an obvious spot and say ‘here’s the body.’ But this doesn’t feel the same. This feels like nothing. Like I hit a brick wall before I could do more than start the car.”

In my years of working with her, never had I heard her say the like before. She clearly had never experienced this before, either, as confusion ran rampant through her lines.

“Does that mean she’s possibly alive?” Abby posed the question, glancing around at all of us. “But Dwayne felt the bond break. So it’s not possible, right?”

“I don’t even know what to say to that.” Carol stopped the search entirely, now glaring at the picture as if this was somehow its fault. “Borrowman, what about the rest of the evidence?”

“I basically skimmed the file while pulling stuff for you guys, so I don’t know the nitty-gritty, but I do remember her clothes and a weapon were found buried in the backyard. Presumably the clothes she wore the day she went missing. Grab those?”

“Grab those,” Carol confirmed.

Really trying to boost her search, huh? Although, if she could find the source of the weapon, that would be helpful. Might as well use Borrowman while she had him.

Borrowman was back in a jiffy and handed her the clothes. Carol snapped on gloves before she took them out of the brown envelopes, placing them on top of the picture. Nothing fancy—a pair of jeans, basic red T-shirt, and leather sandals. Then she started in again.

Only to stop a second later with the same frustrated frown. “Nothing on the clothes. Same block.”

“This is getting weird,” Donovan muttered under his breath.

It was beyond weird, in my opinion. Also intriguing.

Carol was taking it personally, like a gauntlet had been thrown down. She thrust out a hand and barked, “Weapon.”

Borrowman also snapped on gloves before he swiftly handed the weapon over to her, taking the clothes and picture back in exchange. When she pulled it out of the envelope, I was a little surprised to see a hand axe. It was something you’d take camping to chop up firewood. It wasn’t a “normal” murder weapon, in my experience. Although people would grab anything at hand in the heat of the moment.

Carol put the axe down on the table, cracked her knuckles like she was going into the ring, and then started again. She really hated being thwarted.

A taut second later, she paused, head tilting to the side. “Borrowman, what was the address for where the clothes were found?”

“Um. One sec.” He flipped the folder open and read through it before saying, “324 Maple Court. Here in Nashville.”

She stared at the map a little harder. “Reading says this thing originated in the house’s backyard.”

I looked at the axe, which was clearly manufactured, with its black handle and red and black blade, and had a mental huh ? “No way the axe was made in the backyard.”

“Not by usual means.” Donovan stroked his chin. “Is it possible someone rubbed their energy off on this thing? Okay, that sounded weird coming out of my mouth.”

“I don’t know if you even can.” Carol glanced up to meet Donovan’s eyes. “Although, this is reminding me of the head-boppin’ case we had up in Clarksville.”

“Yeah? Same feeling?”

“Pretty similar. These results don’t even make sense. I will swear to you this axe was made in that backyard.”

Now didn’t that beat all.