Chapter 21

21

The business travelers hotel where Colleen was staying out by the interstate was a squat, ugly, modern building of beige brick and tinted glass that looked more like a cheap office building than a hotel.

Pretty drab and depressing , Colleen thought as she stood in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her just washed hair.

She tossed her phone onto the bed and pulled her rolling suitcase out from the open closet.

Which actually made sense though, didn't it? she thought as she unzipped the case. It had been one pretty drab and depressing day.

As she attempted to cobble together an outfit, she went over the epic runaround she was currently on the receiving end of. The suddenly unavailable police report had just been the beginning of it. Heading to a county coroner meeting she had scheduled, she suddenly received a call from its office that curtly informed her that it was now unscheduled.

And then as she redirected and went in person into the prosecutor's office in Hartford to talk to someone about the miraculous reopening of Olivia Ramos's case, she'd hit another dead end. When she'd arrived, she was told the prosecuting attorney involved had just left for the day, sorry.

It was a sorry day all right, she thought as she took out her makeup bag.

Which was why she had called Mike.

Mike had been a hero in the old neighborhood even before he had become an official one with the navy SEALs. Fistfights in the Irish Bronx were not uncommon and Mike—who many had nicknamed Hulk in high school because of his stocky stature and football workouts—had participated in more than one or two or three or four of them.

Then after high school, not only had he become a genuine SEAL, he had also been a detective in the NYPD.

A heavy hitter, too, it seemed from the way her fireman brother and cop ex-husband had always gushed about him. They told her stories about how he had been involved in the bomb squad and NYPD SWAT Emergency Service Unit and how he had been a detective in one of the hairiest precincts in Brooklyn. He was retired now but only recently.

And you don't make detective without really knowing your stuff, right? Colleen thought.

Because she was going to need some serious investigative help here to figure this one out, that was for sure. These people at the college and now the town police and prosecutor's office were seemingly engaging in some major cover-up. No way was she used to something this crazy.

Maybe she could ask Mike about the best way to go forward, see if maybe he had ever come across something like this. Maybe he could help her think of something she was missing to get around this corrupt version of a New England stone wall.

The last thing she wanted to do was come all the way up here and mess this up and somehow face Olivia's father, Emilio, empty-handed.

Life had screwed this poor guy over so horribly. That was why Colleen was determined to get to the bottom of this poor girl's death. Emilio needed a win.

That was also why she was really glad when Mike had picked up. The highlight of her day without a doubt. She just needed to download all of this stuff.

Was that all though? Colleen thought to herself, remembering how Mike looked this morning. Downloading? That's it?

No, that wasn't all, she decided as she fished out her concealer. All day long she kept thinking how handsome Mike still was despite all the time that had passed.

She remembered Mike once from a high school football game crushing some bigger guy coming up the gut on a goal line play. This big guy halted like a car had hit him as Mike—off his feet, flying through the air like Superman—hit him in the chest. The ball popping loose as well as the guy's helmet as Mike drilled him into the ground. The crowd going bananas as everyone chanted, Hulk, Hulk, Hulk.

He was just a more seasoned Hulk now, wasn't he? she thought, smiling. Or was hunk the word?

And the look on his face when their eyes met in front of the coffee shop. Well, that brought back memories, didn't it?

Tendrils of her dark hair fell on Colleen's cheeks as she pulled off the towel. She blew a wet wisp out of her eyes as she turned and peered and then smiled even more widely at herself in the mirror above the desk.

"Who knows, Colleen?" she said, squinting at herself. "Maybe, just maybe, you still got it after all."

She had just finished blow-drying her hair twenty minutes later when there was a sudden thumping directly above where she was sitting at the desk.

Looking up at the popcorn ceiling, she heard the sound of children laughing followed by the bark of a dog. A moment later there was some loud rap music. Then the music stopped and there was a yell and she heard a baby crying.

She smiled, thinking about her own childhood and the happy chaos of their home.

She was pooching through her makeup for her mascara when she heard it again.

There was another thump and then another.

But as she looked up, she realized it wasn't coming from the ceiling.

Colleen turned as another knock sounded against her hotel room door.