Fatal Hearts (12 page)

“Well, I’d call the outgoing numbers a damned good start. A fucking treasure trove, compared to what we have now. He must have made lots of outgoing calls in connection with his investigation.”

“I’ll keep after them and will share when I get it. Meanwhile, I intend to keep poking around.”

“Great. I could use the help. And if the evidence is out there, we’ll find it.”

Boyd managed a gruff, “Thanks.”

“Just remember what I said. If people start complaining about the hotshot Toronto cop doing our jobs for us, my ass’ll be in a sling. And you know what that means.”

Boyd knew exactly what he meant. One call to the mayor or the police chief from a citizen with ruffled feathers, and the crap would begin to roll downhill, gathering speed until it came to a splattering stop at the detective’s doorstep. And from there it wouldn’t be long before it landed on Boyd’s boss’s desk.

“Understood.”

CHAPTER 10

Back at the house, Boyd found himself at loose ends.

He’d gone for a run shortly after leaving Detective Morgan. Since then, he’d had his second shower of the day and called his parents. Of course, when he’d come to Fredericton, he hadn’t told Frank and Ella McBride what he was up to. He hadn’t wanted to add to their pain.

They’d cried when he’d broken the news of Josh’s death to them, a deed he hoped would stand as the hardest thing he would ever have to do. Despite their shock and shattering grief, they’d both soldiered through the visitations and the funeral. They’d been touched to see the genuine outpouring of grief from so many people and had been grateful to meet Hayden.

The days afterward had been very dark, though. His father, ever solicitous of Ella’s comfort, safety, and well-being, had tried to keep some semblance of normalcy going, but his mother had been impervious to his attempts. In those days, she’d walked around like a ghost, hollowed out by the loss of her son. Of course, after a few days, Frank McBride gave up and retreated into his own silence. Fortunately, Ella had come around, at least enough to see to meals and make sure Frank took his medication. She was a nurturer at heart, always had been. When she’d seen her husband sinking under his own grief, she’d responded. She was needed, and therefore she would rise to the challenge.

Damn, he’d hated leaving them. Hated lying about where he was going too. But he’d had to. Knowing he was here, digging into Josh’s last days because he thought he’d been murdered would definitely pain them. So he’d told them he was taking a long-overdue vacation. A fishing trip, he’d told them, since that was the only type of vacation he ever took.

Ella had answered on the third ring. Yes, he was relaxing. No, he hadn’t caught anything really camera-worthy yet, but it was early days. No, they didn’t have high-speed Internet, so he couldn’t Skype, but cellular service was good, and he’d call more often.

He felt like crap when he finally hung up. They seemed so frail since Josh’s death. They were both in their early seventies, having adopted him and Josh when they were just a few years older than Boyd now was. He’d never thought of them as frail before. Sure, Frank had degenerative disc disease and his joints complained now and then and he took meds to control his cholesterol and high blood pressure, and Ella had a thyroid condition, but somehow he’d never really even thought of them as
old
. But in their grief, they seemed so now.

Maybe he shouldn’t have left them so soon. But to delay any longer . . . the trail was cold as it was. And they did have a home care worker who checked in on them three times a week, made up a few meals, and dealt with the laundry. Physically, they’d be all right.

He leapt up off the chair. Dammit, he needed to do something to get him closer to an answer. And he had to do it
right fucking now
! But what? Until he got those call detail records, he didn’t have anything solid to work from. And the journal . . . it had probably gone the way of Josh’s phone, but even if it hadn’t, he’d already torn the room apart. He’d talked to Hayden. He’d talked to Josh’s landlady. He’d talked to Josh’s coworkers and put his head together with Detective Morgan.

He reached for his phone again. It was just past noon. Hayden would be working and would have her phone turned off. But he could still text her. Forcing himself to sit down at the table again, he pecked out a text message.
Can we do something tonight?

No sooner did he put his phone away than it rang. He pulled it out. Hayden.

He hit the button to answer the call. “Wow, that was quick.”

“I’m still on my lunch break,” she said. “Has something come up? When I saw your message—”

“No.” He bent forward, elbows on the table, one hand propping up his head, the other holding the phone to his ear. “Kind of a disappointing morning, actually.” He told her about the K-9 search at the park and coming up empty. “The truth is, I just talked to my parents, who think I left them to take a vacation because I didn’t want to tell them I think Josh was deliberately killed. And the investigation . . . I’m expecting the phone company to send me some call records from Josh’s cell phone activity.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? Really good.”

“It probably won’t hand us answers on a platter because it won’t give us incoming numbers, but the outgoing numbers should help us retrace some of Josh’s steps. Enough to point us in the right direction, hopefully. So there’s reason for optimism that we can figure this out.”

“But?”

“But at the same time, there’s this unrelenting voice in my head saying if I don’t make something break soon, it’ll be too late.”

“Sounds like you need to take a break.”

“Maybe.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “No, it’s not even really that. I think I just want to feel closer to Josh, you know? For a while last night, when we were talking, I kind of did.”

“Me too,” she said softly. Then, in a stronger voice, “So what are we doing tonight? Want to come over to my place again? I’m not much of a cook, but I could probably rustle up—”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s do something different. Something else you and Josh used to do.”

“But someplace we can still talk?”

“Yeah.”

After a pause, she said, “Do you having swimming trunks?”

“No, but I can get some in a hurry.”

“Then I think you should pick me up after work and we’ll go to Killarney Lake for a swim.”

“You guys used to get away to a lake after work on a
weeknight
? There might be something to this laid-back Atlantic lifestyle. I bet all the medical residents want to come here.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I put in twelve hours most days. Today I’ll have worked from seven to seven.”

“So how do you fit in a jaunt to the lake? Wouldn’t it be dark by the time you got there?”

“Ah, I get it.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Get what?”

“It’s not that kind of lake. It’s more of a large pond, shall we say. Okay, not even really that large a pond. But it’s really close. Yeah, the water can be a little on the cool side by the time I get there, but on the upside, the crowd is thinner and you don’t need to slather up with sunscreen.”

“Do you work twelve-hour shifts in the ER every day?”

“They’re not all twelves. Sometimes it’s an eight-hour day, like the other night when I met you for dinner.”

“So when you’re done, you’ll be what? An emergency room doctor?”

“I’m in an integrated family medicine/emergency residency, and when I’m done, I’ll be a family physician who’s equipped to do cover shifts in the ER. Right now, I happen to be doing an ER rotation, but I’m actually splitting my time between the ER and a family medicine clinic.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“Frankly, I’ve had worse rotations.”

He frowned. “But if it’s family medicine/emerge, aren’t you getting what you need right there? Why would you have to do other rotations?”

She laughed. “Oh, man, I wish. By the time I’m done, I’ll have rotated through just about every department you can name, anywhere from four to twenty weeks. Community family medicine, core family medicine, general medicine, general surgery, ob/gyn, orthopedics, pediatrics, CCU, ICU, geriatrics, palliative care—you name it. But you really do have to put the time into all of those specialties to build those basic competencies.”

“Time off?”

“One day a week, unless I’ve got some vacation scheduled.”

He whistled. “Damn, those are some long hours.”

“Yeah, but it’s what I signed on for. And I love working with patients. I’m never bored, either at the ER or the family practice. Especially at the ER, you don’t know what you’re going to see from one minute to the next. And I get to see patients with problems in every imaginable specialty.”

“Sounds kinda like being a uniformed patrol officer, except there
is
a lot of boredom between the peaks of activity.”

“Not here,” she said. “And this residency—these crazy hours—won’t last forever.”

“Bet it feels like it some days.”

She laughed. “So, are you going to pick me up at the hospital?”

“No problem, but what about your car?”

“I live close enough that I usually walk to work when I’m working days. That way, I get at least some minimal cardio and call my exercise done for the day.”

“Did you guys do that often? Go swimming, I mean?”

“As often as we could,” she replied. “Once or twice a week, maybe. Often enough that I got into the habit of keeping a bathing suit in my locker. It’s still there, although I almost took it home last week. It makes me tear up when I see it.”

Shit.
Why did he always have to be hurting her? “We don’t have to . . . I mean, if this is too hard—”

“Everything’s hard right now,” she said matter-of-factly. “Waking up is hard. Brushing my teeth. Putting one foot in front of the other until I get to work. It’s all hard, so we might as well be doing this stuff. You said you wanted to know what Josh’s life was like, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, then. Pick me up at seven. I’ll try to get out the door promptly.”

“Deal.”

With little to fill his time, Boyd was at the ER at six thirty.

He hadn’t intended to be there that early. In fact, he’d planned to take his time getting there, maybe stop at the liquor store he’d seen on York Street and buy a bottle of wine to have on hand, then maybe scope out the downtown restaurants for good places to eat. But as soon as he got behind the wheel of his rental, for some reason his mind went to Dave Bradley, Josh’s coworker. He remembered how uncomfortable the guy had seemed when Boyd asked to search Josh’s cubicle. Had it been because allowing an outsider that kind of access might land him in trouble? Possibly. But he’d seemed relieved when Boyd found nothing, which suggested he had something to hide.

Now there was an angle he could be investigating.

So he drove straight to the hospital and settled in the ER waiting room, where he hauled out his laptop and used his Wi-Fi stick to get connected to the Internet. Tuning out the misery of the unhappy people waiting for their turn to see the doctor, he went online and started researching “David R. Bradley, reporter.” He was in up to his eyeballs in all things Bradley when he became aware of Hayden standing beside him.

“Hey,” Boyd said, “I’m just—”

“What the hell are you doing researching Dave Bradley?”

CHAPTER 11

“Nothing.” Reflexively, he closed his laptop. “I was just poking around online.”

“Like hell.” Her normally full lips were pressed into a thin, stern line and her brows were drawn together over flashing blue eyes. “I saw the screen, Boyd. You’re researching Dave Bradley, and I want to know why.”

Damn, she had good eyesight. “Okay, you got me. That’s what I was doing.”

“I can’t believe this! What did Josh say about him?”

“Josh?” He blinked up at her. “Nothing.”

“I had it handled, Boyd. I didn’t need Josh to come to my rescue then, and I don’t need you to do it now.” She stood there, hands on hips, radiating frustration. “Okay, so it was a little annoying when he didn’t take the no-dating thing seriously at first, but he came around. I told Josh he would, and he did. Dave hasn’t bothered me in . . . God,
weeks
!”

Boyd stared up at her. “Hayden, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Josh never said anything about David Bradley. I don’t think Bradley’s name even passed his lips in our discussions, or not that I remember. And certainly not in the context of him trying to date you.”

She fell back a step. “Then why are you researching him?”

Boyd shrugged. “I thought he was less than truthful with me when I was there the other day. He seemed nervous about my search of Josh’s cubicle. That’s all. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Hayden groaned. “I’m such a loser. I’m so sorry I jumped all over you.”

He grinned. “You can jump all over me anytime.”

She blushed furiously. “Don’t be nice. That was incredibly self-absorbed of me.”

“Hey, don’t give it another thought.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” she said.

“Already forgotten.” He smiled at her reassuringly, but of course he wasn’t moving Dave Bradley off his radar. Not by a long shot.

“So, are we ready to go?” she asked.

“Totally.”

Killarney Lake, as billed, turned out to be little more than a pond. But Hayden was right—it was quick to get to, less than fifteen minutes from the hospital in light traffic. The sand was more like gravel, the small beach was crowded, and the water was probably shallow and tepid. But for all Boyd cared, the beach could have been crushed glass and the water leech infested. Because he was going to get to see Hayden in a swimsuit.

He deferred to her as to where to spread the beach blanket, the one he’d bought at the sporting goods store where he’d picked up the bathing trunks. She chose a spot on the grassy edge of the beach, beneath a tree.

He spread the blanket, dropped his new beach towel on it, then kicked off his sandals and peeled off his T-shirt. A glance at Hayden told him she was peeling down too, and she was doing it with the unselfconsciousness of a clinician who dealt with human bodies day in and day out. He didn’t look at her fully until he’d taken a seat on the blanket.

She was in the midst of twisting all that beautiful blonde hair into a knot on top of her head. Between her uplifted arms and her position above him, Boyd caught his breath. Damn, she was hot. And she was wearing a simple navy Speedo one-piece.

Boyd had dated some knockouts in his time, women who’d worn racy bandeaus or barely there bikinis at the beach. But none of them held a candle to Hayden in her modest neck-to-thigh one-piece. How was that even possible?

She sat down on the other side of the blanket, the one closest to the tree’s trunk.

“I see you picked the same side of the blanket that Josh used to.”

“Did you usually sit here under this tree?”

She nodded. “If it was available.”

“Then that’s why he always chose this side,” he said. “He was putting himself between you and the foot traffic.” He gestured to a pair of young men who’d just raced past, no doubt in a contest to see who could reach the lake’s edge first. “I’m betting he walked on the street side of the sidewalk too.”

“Yes! He
always
did that, now that you mention it.” She blinked. “I never knew. I mean, I didn’t realize he was protecting me.”

“He’d have done it for any woman. That’s what our dad—the one who counts—drilled into us. Gentlemanly manners and all. But I’m sure he took particular pleasure in doing it for you.”

They were silent for a while.

“He loved your father, you know. Your mother too. Just because he was looking for your birth parents didn’t change that. He talked about Frank and Ella a lot.”

“Yeah?” He drew his legs up, linking his hands together in front of his knees. “What’d he tell you about them?”

“He said your mother used to be a teacher?”

“Yeah, but she quit when we came along, stayed at home with us until we started kindergarten. Then she went back to do substitute teaching.”

“Josh credited her with turning him into a reader and writer.”

“I’m not surprised. The two of them were very close.”

“You didn’t go in for that stuff.”

He shrugged. “Not a whole lot. I’d rather be out in the shop with Dad, watching him do stuff and handing him tools.”

“I hear you’re a pretty good carpenter in your own right.”

He laughed. “I can muddle my way through your average DIY project, but nobody would call me a carpenter. Now, Dad is a carpenter.”

“Josh said you do all the repairs around the house these days.”

“Under close supervision, of course.”

“Which you don’t really need, according to Josh.”

“It’s good for Dad. And good father–son time.” He swatted at a fly.

“Sorry about that. I think the flies are a little worse in the grass here. Would you prefer to be out on the sand in the full sun?”

He turned a jaundiced eye on the rocks and pebbles that comprised the so-called sand. “No, this is good.” He glanced back at her, taking in those amazing curves and the slender neck revealed by her upswept hair. Out of nowhere, it struck him how Josh must have felt, sitting here much as he was, looking at the woman he loved. A woman who was clearly oblivious of that love, or at least the nature of it.
Poor bastard.

“You okay?”

Her question made him realize he was staring. “Sorry, I just spaced for a second. Must be sitting here in the sun making me dozy.” He shook himself as though to throw it off. “So what else did he tell you?”

“Let me see . . . I know they’re both big baseball fans, and that they used to take you to Blue Jays games when you were really young.”

“God, yes. We froze our butts off at that old Exhibition Stadium with the wind coming in off of Lake Ontario and loved every minute of it.”

She smiled. “Josh felt cheated that you missed the only Major League Baseball game ever to be played with the field completely covered in snow.”

Boyd snorted. “Yeah, that was 1977. We missed that spectacle by a couple of years. We weren’t even a gleam in . . . well,
somebody’s
eyes at that point.”

The allusion to his unknown birth parents didn’t escape her. “And you used to go to games at the Rogers Centre.”

“It’ll always be the SkyDome to me. We were . . . I don’t know . . . ten or eleven when it opened, and we were in total awe.”

“Hockey games at the Gardens too.”

“Not as often as ball games. Too expensive.” He brushed the persistent fly from his leg. “But we both played hockey, from Mini Mites through to Midget. And Josh played college hockey.”

“He told me about your dad driving you to lots of early-morning games.”

“Yep. Now that I think about it, he would have been a lot older than I am when he started taking us to hockey. Hell, he was almost thirty-eight and Ella thirty-six when they adopted us.”

“That’s not that old,” she said. “Plenty of parents are in their thirties these days before they have their first child.”

“Maybe so. But not sure I’d want to be working long hours at a construction job and still dragging kids to the rink in the dark.”

“Did you ever feel they were too old for the job?”

“Honestly, I never thought about it. In fact, I never really thought about them as
old
at all until Josh died.”

She blinked rapidly. “It’s got to be a hard thing, to lose a child, no matter what age.”

He nodded, looking out over the beach.

“Do you blame him?”

His gaze shot to her face. “Blame who?”

“Josh.”

“For what?”

She shrugged. “For searching for his birth parents. For coming here. For dying.”

“I do not blame my brother for dying.” The words came out sounding gruff, almost strangled.

“But you didn’t really approve of his fixation?”

“Not my place to tell Josh what to do. He was a grown man.” He rolled his shoulders. “But it’s true that I didn’t really approve, because of the legal scrutiny our adoptive parents might have come under. It’s also true that I didn’t share his need to know. Didn’t understand why he’d turn his life upside down, leave a good job, to chase after someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

“You might change your mind about that someday.”

He glanced over at her. She’d drawn her own knees up, circling them with her arms in a subtle mirroring of his posture.

“I can’t see it.”

She looked up from her examination of her unvarnished toes. Very pretty toes.

“What about when you have children of your own? The medical history alone—”

“That’s not something that’s going to happen soon.”

He felt the curiosity in her gaze as she looked at him. “No prospects in the offing?”

“Nope. Though my mother does like to point out I’m getting a little long in the tooth. She was always after both of us to get busy and make her some grandchildren. Personally, I always figured Josh would be the one to oblige, but he always picked the wrong women.”

Her eyes shot wide. “
What?
He never had anything but good things to say about his past relationships.”

“Let me rephrase. Not wrong in the sense of being bad or incompatible. Just not marriage minded. The two I met were really smart, terrific women. But they were just as career focused and ambitious as he was at the time.”

“I can see that,” she said. “That he’d be attracted to smart, energetic women.”

Like you.
It was all Boyd could do to bite back the words. She didn’t need that burden.

They sat in silence a moment. Boyd tried and failed to keep his glance from sliding over her.
Damn.

“How about you?” she asked. “Ever come close to marriage?”

“Once,” he admitted. “A very pretty vet tech I met when I helped a lady get her injured dog to a veterinary hospital. I was maybe twenty-five at the time and crazy in love. We lived together, even talked about marriage, but eventually the job got in the way. I was still working patrol, and after one too many hair-raising episodes, she decided she couldn’t live with someone whose job could be so dangerous.”

She held his gaze. “Did you think about leaving police work?”

“The thought didn’t even enter my head, which she pointed out. I guess maybe I wasn’t as crazy in love as I thought.”

“I get it, though,” she said. “I’d walk away too. Being a cop was all you ever wanted to do, and no one should ask you to give it up for them. It would have been a mistake.”

“Like yours?”

“Exactly. Being a doctor and helping the poor was always what I wanted to do. The difference is I let someone use my emotions, my attachment, to drag me off course. When love gets twisted like that and used to manipulate, it stays twisted. Eventually I saw that and got the hell out.”

Two years. That’s what she’d said the bastard had cost her. If that dumb-ass hadn’t come into her life, she’d be finished with her residency and probably doing some community family practice in southwest Scarborough or north Etobicoke or some depressed area of Vancouver. “I’m glad.”

She arched her back, no doubt to ease the strain of the long day, but Boyd couldn’t miss what it did for that Speedo.

“Well, we know what direction I took after my little relationship side trip,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’ve had a few more . . . I was going to say long-term relationships, but maybe medium-term is more accurate.” The damned fly was back, and Boyd swatted at it again. “One was nine years older than me, divorced, and not interested in going that route ever again, which was okay by me. I enjoyed it while it lasted.”

“And the other?”

The memory of Carrie still made him feel like the world’s biggest failure. “She had issues from her childhood that she never could overcome. Things were good at first. I thought I could lift her sadness, you know? Bear her burdens. And I tried. But it doesn’t work that way. I eventually figured she was the only one who could fix herself.”

“What happened?”

He picked up a stick and started poking at the rocky soil. “She left, presumably looking for a guy with a stronger back.”

“I don’t know where she’d find that.”

His head came up and their glances collided. His chest felt suddenly tight. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Leaning back on his hands, he stretched his legs out. “So you guys talked about Josh’s family. Did you reciprocate?”

As a change of subject, it wasn’t very smooth, but it seemed to work.

“Yeah, I told him about my parents. My dad retired early and took my mother back to Cape Breton with him. It’s been quite an adjustment, after spending their entire married life in the Montreal area.”

“I can imagine. Siblings?”

“Nope. I always yearned for one, though. I thought I’d like to have a sister, but these past few months with Josh . . .” She lifted her shoulders and rotated her neck as though to relieve tension. “He was like the perfect big brother.”

Poor Josh would never have gotten out of that friend zone. Not that he’d be the first guy to try.

“You know, I’ve never had less time on my hands—an eighty-hour week is not unusual—but these past months, I’ve had a more active social life than I’ve had in years. And that was all Josh’s doing.”

Boyd arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“By the time I’d get off, usually he’d have put in his day at the paper and maybe a few hours at his personal investigation. The man had so much energy! And he got things done in a fraction of the time it takes most of us. Anyway, he’d swoop in, pick me up, stick a smoothie or a wrap or both in my hands, and announce we were going somewhere. Just cutting out the time it took to rustle up supper freed up a ton of time. Or he’d pick something up and we’d eat together in front of the TV and talk during commercials. Or he’d just run an errand for me so I could grab a catnap. He took care of me, you know?”