Trace (TraceWorld Book 1) (2 page)

Until she’d started her tracist work, she had been feeling as if she lived in the capital of monotony. Redfort City, a name that sounded part Wild West, part delusion of grandeur, as it was too big to be a fort, too small and unimportant to be a city, and so far from being “West” that most stores accepted Canadian coins along with American ones. A river ran through it and an interstate near it. An indie film theater that was really someone’s garage and a mall that could have been anywhere, a state park to the east and a research park to the west, a downtown where nobody worked anymore, and a whole lot of fast food—that was Redfort. That was where Nola had lived nearly her entire life. She wanted to get out but didn’t know how, or where to go if she did get out, or what to do if she figured out where. The work she would do today wasn’t a way out, she acknowledged as she pulled into the parking lot, but at least it made staying put a little more interesting.

She was delighted to hear that she would be riding along with Matt Gorsky and Jeb Crawford, whose first names precluded her from calling them anything but Mutt and Jeff when they were together. They were possibly the only two detectives in the entire county who accepted her presence on a case without reservation; they trusted her and she got along with them. If the building they were just now emerging from looked nondescript, Mutt and Jeff were the perfect occupants. They somehow always managed to look like a couple of ordinary guys, a useful quality in their line of work. They were also about as different from each other as could be; Gorsky was short and muscular, dark of hair and complexion, and widely rumored to be gay, while Crawford was lanky and fair and getting married to his longtime girlfriend in six months. Yet they worked together brilliantly—and worked with Nola, period. No one else would.

“Perfect timing,” Jeb said with a smile, gesturing toward the unmarked car they’d be using that day.

“Always,” Nola said, getting into the back. She waited as patiently as she could for the guys to get in front and get on their way so she could be briefed on the case.

Thankfully, Mutt and Jeff did not believe in wasting time, another reason she liked working with them. “It’s Culver Bryant,” Matt said without preamble.

She raised her eyebrows. Matt nodded at her in the rearview mirror. “Yup. Mr. Big Shot himself, or at least as big as they come this far upstate, anyway.”

Nola knew, as did everyone else in town, that Culver Bryant was a real estate developer, and whatever wasn’t a hospital or a school or farmland in the greater Redfort area, and really the greater area of Morgan County, was more than likely owned by him or soon would be. If it wasn’t either of those, the property was worthless.

Culver Bryant was rich, and everyone was aware of that. Beyond that, however, little was known about him. Bryant kept his private life private without appearing to be furtive or antisocial. He attended the requisite big-shot charity functions and social events yet managed to avoid calling attention to himself. His house, cars, and clothes were, Nola had heard, “nothing special.” The man himself was almost weirdly indistinct, Nola reflected as she studied the photos Jeb gave her: middle age, average height, average weight.

And now he had disappeared.

They told her very little else about the case, in part to maintain confidentiality but in part because Nola insisted it be that way. She never wanted anyone to wonder whether she had been subconsciously swayed by something she’d heard. As soon as she entered a location, she would turn her focus away from its inhabitant and to the space around them. Her job, like that of a judge, was not to determine guilt or innocence. Even if she ended up sensing trace in a house, that didn’t mean its owner was the murderer—and, more important, it didn’t much matter one way or another, as far as her involvement went. This aspect of her work was, she admitted, aggravating—it made her feel as if she weren’t really a part of the team, not important or valuable or
legitimate
enough to warrant complete inclusion. But it had to be this way, so Nola had no idea whom she would meet that morning.

Mrs. Maureen Bryant was first. She had called the police after her husband had failed to come home at night and then hadn’t shown up for a business meeting the next morning. As they pulled up to the Bryant house, Nola could see that it obviously carried a large price tag. Her entire apartment could have fit into one of the elegant flower beds on the front lawn. Yet there was nothing excessive or gaudy about the Bryant home—or in it, she observed as they were ushered inside by Mrs. Bryant. It struck Nola that while the furnishings didn’t scream new money (expensive in price, cheap in aesthetics, as she liked to define it), they also didn’t necessarily speak of distinctive taste, either—more like the cautiousness of people who knew enough to avoid bad taste but lacked the daring to cultivate their own.

Cautious was also the impression Nola got from Maureen Bryant. She was somewhere in her early thirties, she worked at a nonprofit organization to bring scholarships to underprivileged youths, and she was beautiful in subtle ways—luminous skin, grace in her gestures, a clear, melodious voice. Again, though, like the house, there was a sense of negativity about her, as if her life was more about denying what was wrong than embracing what was right.

There was also no trace whatsoever in the house. Once Nola established this, she could listen in, nonchalantly, on the conversation Matt and Jeb were having with Mrs. Bryant, all while under the guise of being a department clerical assistant taking notes. “Did you notice anything in his behavior that was in any way unusual for him?” Jeb asked.

“He’s been very tired lately, probably because he’s been working very hard on the new development,” Mrs. Bryant said in that quiet, clear voice. “I haven’t seen much of him in the last two months.”

The last sentence struck Nola as a curious one, which she pondered as the detectives wrapped up the conversation and headed back to the car. It seemed somehow passive-aggressive, as if beneath the simple statement about her husband’s long hours on the job was a subtle complaint. In the car as they drove to their next destination, Nola felt emboldened to voice this observation to the guys.

They nodded almost simultaneously. “You caught that, huh?” Matt said from the driver’s seat. “Well, you’re dead-on about that. Bryant had a girlfriend. She’s third on our list today, after Vincent Kirke.”

“Kirke, by the way, is the one who tipped us off about the girlfriend when we talked to him on the phone to arrange this meeting,” Jeb said. “We don’t know if the wife knows or not.”

“I’d guess they usually do,” Nola said, “though they don’t want to admit it to anyone, including themselves.”

“Dead-on again,” Jeb said. “The wife usually knows.”

“And,” Nola continued eagerly, “
this
wife seems especially like someone who wants to keep things under control—you know, the kind of person who chooses to ignore unpleasant realities? She was awfully calm for someone whose husband of nine years might be dead.”

Matt and Jeb exchanged a look. “OK, Nancy Drew,” Matt said, his smile visible to Nola from the back of the car. “You trying to take our jobs from us?”

If it had been anyone other than Mutt and Jeff in the car, the Nancy Drew crack would have riled Nola, but she and they had a comfortable enough rapport that she could take the jibe. At the same time, it was pointed enough to remind her that her role in the investigation was a tiny one, and really she was lucky to be included at all. After she chuckled with the guys, she sat back, subdued, and remained quiet until they reached Vincent Kirke’s building.

Culver Bryant’s business partner was as unforthcoming with details as his wife had been. Vincent (Nola could see he was clearly not a Vince) had just come back from jogging when he answered the door; he offered them French-press coffee and led them to a sitting room with a lot of buttery-soft leather furniture and a coffee table of thick Italian marble. Clearly, owning French and Italian things was important to him, yet there was nothing obnoxious about his home or his demeanor. He was a smooth talker, certainly, but that rather made sense given his work with Bryant. Bryant, Nola guessed, was a thinker and a doer but not a talker. Kirke would be the talker, someone who could add that one right phrase to win over investors who might be impressed with Bryant’s forward-thinking ideas and can-do attitude but still lingered on the fence. If that was true, she reflected, it meant that Kirke needed Bryant more than Bryant needed Kirke. She filed that thought away and went back to her secretarial persona.

At first Nola wasn’t sure why she’d been asked to come along for this particular interrogation. While there was logic to supposing Bryant might have been killed in his own home, it seemed very unlikely that Kirke would have murdered Bryant—if Bryant had been murdered at all—at
his
home. Sure enough, there was no trace at Kirke’s downtown loft condo, which strongly suggested “midlife divorced male” and not much else.

Jeb had just gotten to the “unusual behavior” part of his line of questioning, to which Vincent Kirke gave some thought before answering. “I got the sense that something was on his mind the last couple of weeks. He seemed anxious, secretive. Not in a way that was obvious, but I know the guy well, and he’s not normally either of those things. I had the impression there was something eating at him that he didn’t want to talk about, something that made him feel . . .” He hesitated, frowning slightly. “I hate to use the word
guilty
, but it did seem like something weighed on his conscience, if you will. But now, listen, that said,” he added quickly, “I can’t for the life of me imagine what that could be.” It was an odd thing for him to say given his knowledge of Bryant’s infidelity. Matt and Jeb waited, but the man clearly had nothing more to say.

Kirke’s interview was the shortest of the four. As with Maureen Bryant, his reticence didn’t seem suspicious so much as simply part of his nature. These were not flamboyant people.

Lynette Veesy, on the other hand, was another matter altogether. Her hair was copper, her make-up glittery, and she wore a sheer black blouse over a magenta lace bustier and patent leather spike-heel boots—all this on her day off from tending bar. Apparently this was her around-the-house attire.

Her appearance wasn’t nearly as surprising as her first words once they were in her apartment. “What is
she
doing here?” Lynette demanded. She didn’t look at Nola, the only other “she” in the room, but it struck Nola as a suddenly wary avoidance rather than a contemptuous one.

“Ms. Lantri—” Jeb began.

“I know what her name is. You told me that. She’s that psychic, isn’t she? She finds dead bodies.” Her voice had suddenly gone shrill. “Get her out of here!”

A stunned silence followed. Nola had already noted that this place was a “no” in terms of trace, making Lynette’s reaction all the more bizarre. She hadn’t asked anyone else to leave except Nola, and only did that when she realized why Nola was there. But how could she have known? Nola had been introduced as a clerk, and nobody had ever questioned that before. No one had ever recognized her before either. Something was off, and Matt and Jeb knew exactly what to do about it: nothing. Let the suspect—now that she seemed to be one if she hadn’t been before—dig her own hole.

Lynette seemed to realize that her reaction had been extreme. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” Her mouth hung open, her eyes darting around the cluttered but chicly furnished room (the bills sent to Culver Bryant, no doubt). Nola saw that her hands were twitching. Finally, she seemed to calm down. “It’s just that I don’t like to think that he’s . . .” She began to tremble again.

Theatrical, Nola thought. She knew that was an uncharitable judgment—of course Lynette wouldn’t want to think of Culver Bryant as being dead—but something about the woman’s behavior still seemed wrong. Not fake but off-kilter somehow. Regardless, it was clear they weren’t going to get anywhere if Nola stayed, so as disappointing as it was to miss out on whatever else Lynette was going to say, Nola nodded to the detectives that she understood the situation and went outside to the car to wait for them.

“Did I miss anything good?” she asked jokily when the guys returned. They smiled but said nothing, which was a further disappointment, since she could hardly press the matter further.

“Last up is the brother. Half-brother, actually. Same father,” Matt said, flipping through his file folder. “Dr. Grayson Bryant. He was out of town yesterday, got back in late last night. Asked if we could come midday, give him time to catch up on his sleep. He’s a sports doctor, said he’d just returned from some big sports-medicine conference in Chicago.”

Jeb glanced at his watch. “He’s at North Cumberland. If we hit that Starbucks drive-through on Garfield before heading over there, the timing should be right.” He shook his head. “These interviews are going fast.”

Nola knew he meant
too
fast. They weren’t discovering anything new. Nola wasn’t discovering anything at all, and they only had one stop left.

It was a simple brick house in a nice neighborhood of classic older homes on a street lined with tall trees. They flaunted spectacular fall colors, and while getting out of the car Nola took in the blazing reds and yellows around them. She found them breathtaking until she remembered that the colors meant leaf death. It always came back to that, she thought grimly. Thank goodness she could get only human trace or she might have stopped functioning long ago. She wondered sometimes if there were people who sensed all trace off everything dying and if these people had been diagnosed as catatonic, schizophrenic, or psychotic, sent to therapy, prescribed meds, institutionalized, all because they couldn’t stop being shaken by death everywhere they went. She also wondered if
everyone
had the ability to sense trace but simply shut that part of their mind off, denying what was unpleasant, unfathomable, in order to carry on under the illusion that it did not exist. Watching a burned-looking leaf flutter to the grass, Nola almost smacked into Matt’s back. Focus, she scolded herself sternly. The door was opening.