Chapter 24

K ate knew what to expect from her request.

"There's no budget money for that," Colby declared, staring at Kate. "If we have a really good reason for bringing in the dogs, that's one thing, but you know how hard it'll be to convince anybody, especially when we're basing it on Simon's words alone."

She winced. "Nobody's found the Feldspar aunt's body. If the dogs find something, then it's a whole different ball game."

"What possible reason would there be to bury the aunt on the property, when three other dead bodies and a wounded sister were left inside the home?" Colby asked, trying to keep the snap out of his voice, though that wasn't working either.

"Convenience, as far as I can tell. That's about the only thing."

"That's a stretch, at best."

"The aunt went missing at the same time most of the family died, or maybe she was part of the murders and disappeared. I don't know," Kate admitted. "But, from what Simon and Doug told me today, the Feldspars have a fairly messed up family dynamic."

Colby waved his hand at that. "That applies to families all over the world.… Let me see if I can get any support for th is concept. In the meantime, dredge up something to back me up, so I have a tangible reason for this."

She nodded, then escaped quickly.

Lilliana asked Kate, as she returned to the bullpen, "Any luck?"

"Not really. He'll see if he can get a cadaver dog, but we don't have anything besides Simon's words, Simon's feelings."

"Yeah, that'll be a problem," Rodney added, as he walked into the room with some coffee. "Psychics being what they are."

"I know," Kate snapped. "So it's up to me to figure out if I have any reason why the aunt would be buried there."

"What have you got so far?" Rodney asked.

"Somebody didn't want her to survive, for one thing."

"Maybe," he conceded. "The question is, survive what and why?"

She sat down at her computer and opened her email, her attention immediately drawn to those that Doug had sent her. She stared at his crime scene pictures, then brought them up on the big screen and compared his set to the official crime scene photos.

Lilliana walked up beside Kate and asked, "What is this?"

"Doug Feldspar took these two pictures of the crime scene, while he waited for Darrian to show up and to help him out, which is something that just blows me away. More than that, Doug waited until Darrian showed up, and then they called the cops. Doug said he was so shocked that he didn't know what to do and that Darrian was a really good friend of the family, so he called him for help."

Lilliana shook her head. "That's all kind of dodgy in the first place."

"Exactly. I know that, and you know that. Yet Doug swears that absolutely no way would Darrian be involved in anything negative."

"Do you believe that?"

"Not necessarily, especially if I consider Daisy's stories regarding Darrian. According to Daisy, her husband and Darrian were initially business partners, but Darrian was inclined to use more creative business practices that were marginal at best, and so their accounting partnership split up because of that. As a result, Mr. Mahoney used to refer clients who wanted that sort of shady service over to Darrian. So, they maintained an association the entire time, and Darrian is the one who handled certain accounting and income tax returns and eventually became a partner in multiple deals with Doug Feldspar, after he inherited all the investments of his parents, who were murdered in the Feldspar house."

" Doug inherited the Feldspar family trust?"

"I'm not sure what, if anything, the brain-damaged sister got out of it, other than maybe paying for her medical care and for her rent at the facility. Otherwise it seems Doug inherited it all. Yes."

"Does he still have the family trust?"

"It is currently owned by a holding company that supposedly Darrian Jackson set up for Doug."

"I've started looking at that," Reese joined in, coming from behind her. "The paperwork is legit, except for one thing. The only person listed as a beneficiary to that entire family trust is Darrian Jackson."

Kate nodded. "I did warn Doug today that he should look into this, in case anything happened to him, and he got quite angry at me," she shared, with an eye roll. "I mean, it's just good business sense, but coming from a cop was apparently insulting. Doug also sent me the latest statements he had received from Darrian on his holdings."

"If you give them to me," Reese suggested, "I can check into the history on the company registration and that sort of thing."

Kate immediately forwarded the emails to Reese, then asked her team in general, "What is our current situation with anybody who can analyze these things and make sense of them?"

Lilliana replied, "Forensic accounting, but I've heard they're pretty backed up at the moment."

Kate shared, "Simon offered to take a look at them, but I wasn't exactly sure that would be seen as legit."

"Probably not," Lilliana guessed, "unless you can get it cleared." When she nodded toward Colby's office, Kate winced.

"Maybe I'll check out the forensic accounting situation first." She quickly picked up the phone and explained her issue.

The tech replied, "I can't do a full-blown analysis, but, if you just want a quick overview to get a sense of things, I can take a look. Probably nothing's irregular, but it could certainly happen."

"It's related to the Feldspar murders from a decade ago, brought up after we've had two homeless guys murdered recently, and now may have found the potential dead body of the Feldspar aunt."

"Send it over," the tech guy replied, sounding much more intrigued. "Who knows what we'll find."

With that she sent over the financial records and sat back down to look at the crime scene images she was trying to compare. Just as she sipped her coffee, her gaze caught on one thing. She leaned forward and then looked back and forth from one set of photos to the other, then announced to the room in general, "Can somebody come here and confirm what I may or may not be seeing?"

Lilliana walked over briskly and asked, "What's up?"

"Look. Do you see anything irregular… here and here?"

Lilliana looked at it for a moment, then frowned. "This one shows the feet of a second body, and this one taken from a slightly different angle doesn't ."

"And yet," Kate asked, "how much of a difference in angle is there?"

"What are you saying?"

"We should have three dead bodies, the parents and the grandmother."

At that, Rodney came over and took a look. "Yeah, I get what you're saying." He peered closer at the pictures. "Here we've got the feet of another body, and over here… we don't."

She nodded as she switched out the photos. "So, now considering that this is the other body…"

"Shit… and that's a different room," Lilliana pointed out.

"Exactly, but we have the feet of another body in this room, so how does any of that play out?"

"Are you suggesting there's a fourth dead body?"

"Clearly something isn't adding up." They were still standing here, huddled together, studying the big screen, when Colby came out of his office and came closer. "What's the matter?"

Kate pointed at the screen. "We may have a fourth dead body in this crime scene."

"Or it could have been the sister presumably on the floor, not dead but injured by a gunshot," he pointed out. "So that could be the sister's shoes."

"Maybe," Kate said in a noncommittal voice.

"What possible reason could there be for hiding the sister's photo, if she didn't die?" Lilliana asked.

"I don't know," Kate muttered. "I really don't know at the moment. I'm just saying that something is off, and there are no more photos to explain this."

Colby nodded. "Apparently you or Simon have friends in high places. I got an okay for a cadaver dog. But just one, and use it covertly please."

She couldn't believe her luck, then nodded and made the phone call. "As soon as you can would be great, and, given the notoriety of the original case, we don't want to start some media shit show. Therefore, do this very discreetly." She disconnected, then announced, "I'm heading over there now."

"They're going now?" Lilliana asked.

"Yep," Kate confirmed, with delight in her gaze. "The sooner we sort this out, the better."

Colby still stood in front of the pictures, frowning. "Why the hell didn't the kid turn these over way back when?"

Kate had no good idea herself. "He was fourteen, a mess at the time, and maybe the cops back then didn't particularly worry that he might have taken pictures, not the way we do now."

"Better go ahead and talk to whoever was assigned to the case," Colby noted.

"We can't," Reese replied, from across the room. "He and his partner are both deceased."

At that, Colby stiffened, then turned to her. "That was Foster and Brooks, wasn't it?" Everybody was looking at him for more details. "They were killed in a car accident, out of the blue. We very suddenly lost two men."

"Jesus, Sergeant," Kate muttered, looking through the related case file that Reese had just handed to her. "They were assigned to this case, and, although things have been looked at since, a lot of it more or less died with them."

Colby stared at Kate. "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking."

"Oh, I probably am. I just don't have evidence yet that people were killed when they knew too much, either the two detectives back then or the two homeless guys this week. Or worse, that two detectives were involved in the initial cover-up." She turned her attention back to the crime scene photos. "If that's not the injured sister on the floor, it could be the missing aunt."

"And yet why hide her body? What possible reason would there be for secreting away just one of four dead bodies?"

"I don't know, not yet. However, this is not the sister with the brain injury because," she explained, as she clicked on the photos, "that's her there at the bottom of the stairs. So, by my thinking, this extra dead body could be the missing aunt, Albert Feldspar's sister."

Rodney tried to wrap his head around what Kate had just shared.

Kate explained, "The file is confusing, and the media reports have been confusing, and the information from people I've interviewed is also confusing and does not add up. We have Doug and Darrian messing with the crime scene. Then add to the mix that the two detectives with the most firsthand intel on the case wound up dead, and it's even more confusing." As far as she was concerned, this investigation had gotten even broader.

"Hells bells," Rodney muttered, "maybe this was all a smokescreen, right from the start."

Kate nodded. "I'm heading up to the Feldspar house now to meet with the cadaver dog team."

"I'm coming with you," Rodney declared.

When Kate started to protest, Colby spoke to her sternly. "No," he stated with finality. "From now on you guys travel in pairs on this. I don't know for sure what happened to Foster and Brooks, but I can tell you that I knew both of them, and they were… Let me just say that rumor had it that internal affairs was looking at them."

"Ah, shit. What for?" Kate asked.

"Bribes," Colby muttered.

"So maybe that accident wasn't so accidental," she mumbled, turning to look at the crime scene pictures. "All the more reason to sort this out."

Sergeant Colby nodded. "So, bring back some proof, and then we'll have something to go on."

"Yeah," Kate agreed. "So far, whoever has been cleaning this up is doing one hell of a job." And, with that, she turned and left.

*

Simon picked up a coffee and sat outside his favorite coffee shop. He looked around, wondering at such a world where his instincts, or whatever he should call it, were telling him where a body was buried. It was not exactly what his grandmother had told him would happen, but she had warned him that just when he thought he understood what his gifts were and what he was capable of doing with them, they would change, and he wouldn't know anything at all.

When he got a text from Kate, saying the cadaver dog was on, he winced because that was money, that was people working to see if Simon was right. As much as he wanted to be correct, that also meant some poor soul had been secretly buried in the ground, and he didn't want to be correct about that at all.

Just then his doorman, Harry, walked over, grabbed a coffee, and greeted him. "Man, you cover a lot of ground," he teased.

"I know." Simon raised a hand.

"Any news on that Feldspar thing?"

"Maybe. Do you know very much about the family?"

" Nah , just that part about the sister being in a home."

"What kind of condition is she in?"

"Not great. I don't know if she's even verbal, you know? She's been through a lot."

"Any idea just what all happened to her?" Simon asked.

"No, I sure don't, but Kate should be able to tell you that."

"Yeah, she could, but I don't really want to push it."

"I get it," Harry said, "but, hey, my cousin's full of gossip, so let's talk to her some more." He pulled out his phone, called her, and asked, "That patient I was asking you about the other day? What kind of condition is she actually in? I know you mentioned full care, but what exactly does that mean?" Harry frowned as he listened to his cousin Reenie. He put the call on Speakerphone, turning down the volume, glad they were outside and away from other patrons.

His cousin replied, "She's basically a vegetable. She gets full care, feeding tubes, the whole works."

"She hasn't woken up?" Harry asked.

"No, I don't think she can wake up at this point. Though I could be wrong, I guess."

"But she's not been kept in a drugged state or anything like that?" Harry asked.

"I don't think so, but it's one of those ritzy private sanitariums. If people wanted to keep her out and away from life, that would be one way to do it."

"Which would be pretty disgusting," Harry muttered.

"Yes, but it happens," she confirmed. "I heard about a case not too long ago."

"I know. I heard about that one also," Harry noted, knowing perfectly well that Kate had been involved in that case too. "Have you ever thought that something like that might be going on with her?"

Harry's cousin said, "I wouldn't want to lose my job over this."

Reenie didn't realize that Simon was listening in, but she had his attention.

She added, "It's a pretty decent job."

Harry asked, "How would you feel about it being a decent job if you knew people were being kept against their will?"

"I have no reason to think that they are, but it would be pretty shitty if that was the case."

"Yeah, it would."

"Are you saying that's going on here?" she asked in alarm.

"I'm not saying anything," Harry clarified. "I'm just curious about the Feldspar sister's update."

"Well, if you think something like that's going on, you should do something about it because she probably was a really nice little lady."

"Did you know who she was before, or can you talk to her now?" Harry asked.

"No, no… she can't talk.… I don't have any reason for even saying that.… Listen to me talking about her as if she's got a chance at waking up, but I don't know that she does."

"If so, it would be nice for her to get that opportunity," Harry noted.

"You're not kidding, but that's not my decision or even my business. I've got to go." And, with that, Reenie was gone.

Simon looked over at Harry and noted, "Interesting philosophy."

"So many people are that way today," Harry said. "They're almost untouched by everything going on around them, so focused on getting by in their own world that they can't see past it."

Simon nodded. "I think a lot of that is age-related too," he murmured. "The older you get, the more of life you have to deal with, so you realize how quickly it helps to change who you are."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, like some other tenants in the building, who have no respect for anybody else."

Simon smiled. "Of course not."

"Don't worry about me," Harry replied. "I just get frustrated with it every once in a while."

"I get it. Who wouldn't?"

They both laughed, but then Harry added, "I don't know about you, but I'm getting a really ugly feeling about that poor woman in that facility."

"I don't know if it's possible to even do anything for her at this stage," Simon shared, "but I'm tempted to go over there and see if they are taking new patients ."

"Oh, you should do that," Harry agreed, with a smile. "At least then maybe we'll get some answers. While you're doing that, I've got to go get ready for my shift," he muttered. "I can't just sit around chatting over coffee all day." And, with a laugh, he got up and left.

Simon smiled, hopped to his feet, and decided there was absolutely no point in waiting. He might as well go check out the facility. As he walked toward the high-rise a few blocks away, right where Harry had said it was, he heard that damn voice again, and this time it was much stronger.

Feldspar .

"I know," he muttered, "I found something at the Feldspar home, or maybe I found someone. Anyway Kate's gone to check it out. So give me a break, will you?" As he got up to the facility's address, he looked at the business directory found on the first floor and froze. Located on the twelfth floor of this building was a medical facility called Felden Spark House.

He let out his breath, took a picture of the directory, and sent it to Kate. Felden Spark and Feldspar were way too close for comfort. Stepping off the elevator on the twelfth floor, he walked into the reception area, where a woman looked up at him and smiled.

"May I help you?"

"Yes, I'm looking for a decent place for a family member."

Her smile grew compassionate, and she nodded. "Of course. You're lucky, as we do have one bed available."

He looked around and nodded serenely. "Can you show me?"