Forbidden (Southern Comfort) (17 page)

Clay ripped one of the paper towels off the roll in the middle of the table so that he could wipe barbeque sauce from his mouth.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  If it weren’t for you, it might have been hours before anyone knew Casey was missing, and the sheriff almost certainly wouldn’t have given her disappearance the high priority it has right now.  Doing your part to help that little girl last night, and to help ID Casey’s possible abductor today… that’s nothing for which you need to feel
regret.  Trust me, when I signed on with the ISU, I realized that interruptions and inconveniences to the regularly scheduled program were part and parcel of the life.”

When he put it that way, Tate realized how insignificant a missed day of vacation was when compared with a young girl’s life.  But still, everyone was entitled to a break now and then, and there was something about Clay’s demeanor over the past couple of days that suggested the break was sorely needed.  She remembered how he’d shied away from Max that first day on the beach
.

“I don’t mean to pry, and I know it’s none of my business, but…” Tate hesitated, wondering how to best phrase the question.  “Did something bad happen on one of your cases before you came here?”

“Something bad has happened on every one of my cases.  People generally don’t call me in when a guy sends his girlfriend flowers.”

Tate frowned at the flippant remark.  “That’s n
ot what I meant.  It’s just that you seemed… I don’t know, a little gun shy when you first met Max. Like you’d had a bad experience or something.  At first I thought you simply didn’t like kids, but that’s obviously not the case.  You’re really, really great with Max.  He adores you.”

Clay took a sip of iced tea.  Cleared his throat.  “I, uh… Don’t know what to say
to that.  Thank you.  Max makes it pretty easy to be, you know, great.”

Tate smiled, dredging a fry through ketchup.  “You know, you didn’t really answer the question.”

“No?”

She shook her head. 

A bead of sweat rolled off Clay’s temple and he wiped it with the back of his hand.  “It’s really hot out here.  Do you want to finish our lunch at the station?”

“If it’s something you can’t or don’t want to talk about, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“The
heat’s
making me uncomfortable.”

Her bland look had him sighing in acknowledgement.  “Okay.  You’re right.
” He pushed his tray to the side and leaned back.  “A few weeks ago, I was in Kansas working a case.  The specifics aren’t important, but my profile helped lead the locals to the right man. The guy had a wife, a kid – five-year-old boy, cute as a button – that he used as target practice when he wasn’t out assaulting his victims.  When the police cornered him, he took his family hostage.  Anyway, long story short, I got pressed into trying to negotiate.  I failed.  Completely.  The guy blew himself and his family away before I could even say
boo.
”

“Oh, Clay.”  Tate reached for his hand across the table.  “And yet you volunteered to spend the entire day yesterday with Max.  How difficult that must have been.”

“Actually,” he squeezed her hand.  “It was remarkably easy.  Yet another reason to knock the guilt block off your shoulder.  Being at that carnival with Max was good for me.  I’d been avoiding the issue ever since it happened, first throwing myself back into work, then throwing myself into vacation. Because I was… afraid.  Afraid of admitting that I felt like a failure.  That if I’d been a little bit smarter, a little bit better, a little bit faster, that child might still be alive.  But last night I realized that I’d done the best I could.   

“And besides, if I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gotten a look at the perp, and you and I probably wouldn’t be sitting here
enjoying our daily dose of indigestion.”

Tate smiled, a
lthough she suspected he was changing the subject on purpose.  Humor was obviously his default coping mechanism, as he’d managed to find the comedic side of almost every lousy situation they’d found themselves in. 

“So how’d the sketch turn out?” he inquired, clearly wanting to close the door on the previous topic.  “I meant to look it over to compare it against my own observations, but Deputy Harding hotfooted it out of the interview room before I had a chance to ask.” 

“The sketch looks great.  I might not have described the guy exactly, but it seems to be much closer than I would have thought possible.  Josh is really a fantastic artist.”

Clay muttered
something under his breath.

Tate’s head popped up.  “What?”

“I said Deputy Harding seems like a nice guy.”

“He is nice,” she agreed,
although she was sure that was not what he’d muttered. “Actually, it’s kind of surprising.  Given my experience, men who look like that can’t see past their own reflection.”

When he was quiet,
Tate looked up to find his warm brown eyes sharp with comprehension.  “Max’s dad?”

She didn’t want to talk about… the jerk… not ever, but after the way Clay had
bared himself, she didn’t feel it was fair to shut him out.

“Yes.”  It was a simple answer to his question, but she could tell by the look on his face that he was waiting for the story.  Maybe it would help him to understand why she’d called a halt to their physical relationship
, as well as to remind
herself
why she didn’t do casual flings.

There were simply too many repercussions.

“It’s nothing dramatic,” she warned, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear.  “Just your typical love-struck girl falls for ego-centric guy who dumps her the moment he finds out she’s pregnant.”

“You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to.”
   

But Tate suddenly felt the need to get it out.
“Final semester of my senior year in college, I did an internship at the Regency in Atlanta. I was a glorified gopher, but I loved it.”  Had loved it more, she recalled, for a certain recurring guest.  “Anyway… there’s a spa there that’s absolutely to die for, and some of the suites offer complementary services with return visits, which is a really nice lure for drawing people back.  I was working the spa rotation – helping at the desk – when I first met Max’s dad.”

“One of those repeat guests?”

“Um-hmm,” she agreed.  “He was a sales rep, traveled a lot.  And as you can probably guess, he was gorgeous and charming. I was naïve and smitten – young and stupid enough to mistake sophistication for class.  As you said, long story short, we had a raging affair that ended in condom failure. When he found out I was pregnant, he…” she swallowed, lingering shame rising like bile in her throat. “Well, that’s when he suddenly remembered that he was married.  Separated, but legally married, with no interest in complicating the situation with a child.  Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.  Not a very original punch line.”

“He
’s an asshole.”

Tate couldn’t help but smile at his quick assessment
.  “I’m inclined to agree.  He’s the kind of man who puts his interests above all others, just recklessly crashing through life not really caring what he might break.  But if he hadn’t been an asshole, I wouldn’t have my son.”

AND
suddenly, Clay felt like an asshole, because he realized that on some level, he was no better than Max’s dad.  Of course, no way in hell would he ever cheat on his wife, nor would he abandon Tate if she were pregnant.  However, he
was
putting his own interests first, because Tate had given him some very valid reasons as to why she couldn’t take their acquaintanceship to an intimate level.

And here
he
was, disregarding that, trying to find a way to finagle himself into Tate’s bed.

Shit.

He’d already been through all that this morning.  He had nothing to offer this woman other than a temporary good time.  A long distance relationship was impractical if not impossible, and did he really want to put either of them through that?

God.  Was he actually considering a relationship?

This was further proof that he’d blown some kind of gasket.

Relationships were difficult
, even under the best of circumstances, and trying to maintain one in the face of both his demanding career and the hundreds of miles between them was nothing short of crazy.  He should shuttle this woman back home as quickly as possible, go about the business of putting her out of his mind.

That was something he usually excelled at.  Compartmentalizing was an essential part of his job.  To do what he needed to do, not think about the rest.  If not, he would have driven himself crazy.

Kind of like right now.

He had to put Tate in some kind of off-limits category, because wanting her like this was going to kill him.

Tate was watching him, albeit surreptitiously, from under the heavy fringe of her lashes.  This is the part where he should make some appropriate noises that conveyed non-committal acknowledgement of what she’d told him. 

Of course, what he really wanted to say was “his loss, my gain.”

But before he could say anything, Deputy Harding came skidding around the corner.  He stopped short, flicked a glance at Tate, clearing his throat as he turned to Clay.

“Sor
ry to interrupt your lunch.  But one of the search teams has just uncovered something.  We think we might have a crime scene for you to look at.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE
body lay in a shallow grave, buried amidst a stand of loblolly pines just a couple of miles from the fairgrounds.  A tattered, blood-spattered sneaker found nearby had caught the eye of a member of the search party, and after a brief survey of the area he’d discovered a young girl’s partially exposed hand. 

Thankfully, the man had the sense to leave the scene intact and call in the sheriff.  Clay asked both the crime scene techs and the coroner to wait for his arrival to begin collecting evidence, as the way an offender left a scene revealed substantial information about his behavior.  Outdoor crime scenes, particularly body dumps, were more difficult to process because both the elements and nature’s clean-up crew – insects and small predators – conspired to erase the clues left behind. 

But Clay gathered what information he could, like the fact that this must have been an unplanned attack, because the grave was inadequate.  Clearly an afterthought, the girl’s final resting spot was less than twenty-four inches deep.  The perp hadn’t brought along any tools to dig with, but instead had used a rock that Clay found tossed aside, and probably his hands.  If he’d planned to kill the girl, he hadn’t planned to do it here.

But Clay suspected that he hadn’t planned to kill her at all.   His action had most likely been brought on by a sudden, blind rage – maybe the girl resisted him, or said something to set him off – or he’d accidentally used more force than necessary when trying to subdue her.

Clay studied the scene, the proximity to the road, and the tread marks that suggested a heavy application of brakes.

Escape attempt, he mused, probably while the vehicle was moving. The perp slams on the brakes, exits the car, not going to let her get away.  Already caused him enough trouble, he thinks, little bitch better step in line.  Maybe he hits her in the face – the blood on the sneaker – and then proceeds to pound her into submission.

But he’d underestimated the force of his blows, and accidentally killed her.

The crime had occurred right here.

Clay believed that the offender panicked – killing her was not in his plan – and then sought to conceal the evidence of his misdoing.  Not thinking entirely clearly, he left that sneaker above ground instead of tossing it into the grave. Then he dropped the rock, which probably wouldn’t hold any fingerprints but may have managed to snag an epithelial, right next to the gravesite.

He’d have to wait for the autopsy to be able to say for sure, but he’d bet money the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. 

The body had reached a point of decomp, aided by the rich, loamy soil beneath the pines, that made it impossible to reach a definitive hypothesis simply by doing a visual. But there were no other obvious injuries, such as a gunshot wound, that would suggest his theory was off base.

Intuition caused the little hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.
This kind of rage could be attributed to a number of things, of course.  One of them being ‘roid rage. 

Like
, he suspected, the man who’d killed the girl in Kim’s snuff film.

And possibly t
he same man who’d taken Casey.

Clay sighed as he looked over the remains of the young girl in the shallow grave.  She was approximately early teens, light brown hair pulled into a matted ponytail.  Eye color was difficult to tell – they’d turned milky due to decompo
sition.  She’d been thin, possibly malnourished. 

Her clothes looked to have been poor quality, stained and worn
before
they’d been covered with dirt.  There was a small knapsack in the grave alongside her, and after the crime scene techs had photographed everything in situ, Clay used a gloved hand to examine the contents of the pink bag.