Page 60 of You'll Be Sorry

“No way!” She actually stumbled slightly, caught off guard by the image.

“Nah, it was actually an IED, a foreign country, and my own sorry self in too big of a hurry to do things right, but let’s face it, the chainsaw story is much more fun.”

She honestly had no idea how to respond.

He grinned slowly. “See, and now you’re no longer feeling sorry for me or my prosthetic.”

“You’re an interesting man, Detective Adams.”

That frisson of tension again.

“Let’s hope by the end of the day, you still think so.”

He liked her murder board. Mandy had never had a man—or woman—say that about her before. Or was it, he liked her father’s murder board? That twisted her head, so she decided she’d stick with the honor.

“You know, I’ve been staring at these pictures for years now,” Adams confessed, “given it’sthecold case in New Hampshire. But our space is a little tight for creating a complete diorama of each crime we’re reviewing. Seeing it all together, the victims, the rooms, the close-ups of the house…” His voice trailed off. “Sometimes I feel like I know these people better than my own family.”

Mandy was startled to hear her own thoughts about the Dixons stated out loud.

“Do you have siblings?” he asked her. They had lunch unpacked on her desk, but were both eating and walking as they perused her photo arrangement in the back room.

“No.”

“Me neither. I sometimes think that’s part of my fascination. An entire family of six, active, rambunctious, well known, vanished without a trace. Seriously, how could such a thing happen?”

He smoothed a hand over his buzz-cut hair. This close, Mandy could make out a two-inch scar furrowed above his left ear. As shrapnel damage went, that had definitely been close.

“There was a dog?” he asked now, reaching toward the faded Polaroid. “I don’t remember reading about a family pet in the Major Crimes reports.”

“My father purposefully excluded most of the canine-related details. The classic hold-back as a way to test the legitimacy of future claims.”

“Huh. When I was young, I was obsessed with dogs. I made friends with this big, bouncy stray at a camp I was at, but my father was allergic, so I was forced to leave him behind.” Adams turned toward her. “What happened to this furry guy?”

“Dog the dog was a local stray, who by all accounts was adopted by the Dixons over the course of the summer. Twenty-four hours after their disappearance, he also vanished, which was one of the details that bugged my father. Where? Why? How? Of course, we now have a new homeless mutt that could be the first stray’s twin. And just to be truly nutso, this canine is the one that found the new crime scene—a hand-dug well so completely overgrown that even thirty years ago, none of the search teams noted it.”

“Damn.” Adams appeared speechless. Which boosted Mandy’s morale. At least she wasn’t insane to feel this crazy.

“Think the remains are historic?” he asked finally.

She shrugged. “Contextual data suggests colonial American times, say, late eighteenth, early nineteenth century.”

“This is gonna be one of those ‘can’t make this shit up’ kinda cases, huh?”

Mandy stared at the tacked-up cluster of photographs. “Yep.”

“So, you wanna know what I found?”

“Way to keep a girl in suspense.”

“It was a long drive. Plus, I like soup. What the hell is in that split pea, anyway? Something a tad different…Maybe a hint of cloves?”

“Everyone’s asked, the chef still won’t say.” Was it her imagination, or was he stalling? She’d swear when the cold case detective tossed his take-out container in the trash, his hands were shaking.

“Let’s start with the footprints.”

“Let’s.”

He’d been carrying a black duffel. Now he crossed to it, pulling out a laptop as well as a manila folder. He absently handed her the file, then booted up his computer. She flipped open the cover to discover dozens of photos of the bloody footprints, including an overhead shot as well as a close-up of a single multilayered imprint.