Killing Ways Read online

  ‘It was his wife …’

  ‘I’ve dealt with him, work-wise,’ said Ren. ‘I walk away with a twitch in my eye. Sometimes I think he expects me to be the one serving the refreshments.’

  ‘Oh, baby girl, you always servin’ up the refreshment!’

  ‘And you keep topping up those glasses, handsome man.’

  ‘God help this guy,’ said Everett, nodding toward the glass panel of the interview room where murder suspect Jonathan Briar was perfectly framed. Briar’s fiancée, twenty-three-year-old Hope Coulson, had now been missing from their Denver apartment for twenty-eight days. Briar had ignited public suspicion with the first dopey words out of his mouth when asked about her on live television: ‘Aww … I’m sure she’ll be back,’ he said, smiling like an idiot, next to Hope Coulson’s weeping parents.

  ‘He doesn’t yet know that he meets a lot of the criteria for the Ren Bryce Book of Wrong,’ said Everett. ‘Stoner – check! Skinny dreads – check! Mouth too small – check! And my second favorite: rat-colored hair – check! I mean, rats are gray. His hair is mousey.’

  ‘Rats are creepier.’

  ‘And my all-time-favorite,’ said Everett. ‘Eyes overly almond: check!’

  ‘Because I like almond-shaped eyes,’ said Ren. ‘Too almond, though – that’s a problem.’ She looked at Everett. ‘I’m a nightmare. I know. Judgey McJudgicles.’

  ‘On the upside of his issues,’ said Everett, ‘every time he appears on screen or in print, the line of volunteer searchers grows.’

  Hope Coulson had captured the public’s hearts. She was a sweet, blonde, kind-hearted kindergarten teacher, a volunteer for everything from painting the ladies’ nails at her local retirement home to delivering Meals on Wheels to the housebound, to being stationed at First-Aid tents at community events. At one time, Jonathan Briar looked like nothing more harmful than a guy who was batting above his weight. Now, he was looking like a killer.

  Ren drank the rest of the Alka-Seltzer, then held a hand to her stomach.

  Ooh. Not good. Drank too quickly, despite best efforts.

  ‘You drank that way too fast,’ said Everett.

  ‘Ugh.’ She threw the empty bottle in the garbage. ‘OK. Shall we dance?’

  ‘We always do.’ He turned the door knob and let Ren go first.

  Jonathan Briar almost jumped from his seat. ‘Did you find her?’

  So dramatic. So forced.

  Ren shook her head. ‘No, Jonathan. No, we did not. Not yet.’ She sat down. ‘Jonathan, I’m Special Agent Ren Bryce, and this is my colleague, Special Agent Everett King. How are you holding up?’

  Briar shrugged. ‘I’m OK … I guess.’

  ‘Let me explain who we are,’ said Ren. ‘Agent King and I are members of the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. Not to alarm you – we do handle all kinds of crimes – but we are technically a violent crime squad. We’re multi-agency, meaning there are FBI agents like us, and there are detectives from DPD – that’s Denver PD, along with members of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, Aurora PD, etc.

  ‘We have to consider that Hope may have been the victim of a violent crime. Of course, we don’t know that yet. I understand you’ve been questioned by DPD—’

  ‘Every day!’ said Jonathan. ‘Every day since she left.’

  ‘Left?’ said Ren.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s exhausting.’

  Not my point. ‘You said “left”,’ said Ren. ‘Do you think Hope just left?’

  Jonathan looked away, shrugging again. ‘It’s better than thinking anything else.’

  ‘Back to what I was saying,’ said Ren. ‘We’re talking to you today at the request of Detective Glenn Buddy at Denver PD, and because some new evidence has come to light.’

  ‘What evidence?’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I want to show you a photograph of your fiancée, Hope,’ said Ren, ignoring the question. She set it down on the table. ‘Well, actually it’s a photo of you and Hope. When was this taken?’

  Jonathan swallowed. ‘Christmas just gone. At my mom’s house. Why?’

  ‘You look really happy,’ said Ren.

  ‘We were,’ he said, nodding.

  Were: past tense.

  Jonathan blinked, but there were no tears.

  ‘Now, here’s another photo,’ said Ren. She set down an aerial photo of a landfill site.

  ‘Do you know Fyron Industries?’ said Everett, shifting forward in his seat. ‘They manage this landfill site. It’s off of I-70. The dumpster by your house – that’s where that goes.’

  Jonathan looked at Everett as if he had just crawled from a dumpster himself.

  Everett took out a red Sharpie and drew a large box on the photo. ‘This area here,’ he said, ‘is three acres square. The garbage runs twenty feet deep if we’re to go back almost a month to when Hope went missing …’

  Jonathan recoiled. ‘What the hell are you showing me this for? What do you mean “go back almost a month”?’

  Don’t look at me for answers. That’s not how this goes.

  ‘To search this area, we’re calling in all the favors we can,’ said Everett. ‘Law enforcement across a lot of different agencies, along with volunteer civilians. That’s the effect Hope has had on people. They’re coming from all over to offer to search a stinking hellhole for her, to suit up and go right in there to look for your missing fiancée. If we can in any way limit all that searching … or if we knew, for example, that we were wasting our time, or anyone else’s time … or if there’s somewhere else we should be looking …’

  As Everett spoke, Ren was studying Jonathan Briar. You are a dull-eyed dope-smoking moron. I have little time for dope-smoking morons.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell us?’ said Ren.

  ‘No!’ said Jonathan. ‘No. Except that you are wasting your time: thinking I did this!’ There was no anger, just a whining, pleading exhaustion.

  ‘Everyone in your position tells us we’re wasting our time,’ said Ren, ‘but, as you know, a lot of the time we’re not. The odds are not in your favor. Before we go in here,’ she pointed to the landfill photo, ‘before we bring people into this wonderland, we’d like to know the truth.’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth!’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ve told you a million times. I’m innocent! Last time I saw Hope she was alive and well. What more can I tell you? That’s my story.’

  ‘Story?’ said Ren.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Jonathan. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘Were you and Hope happy?’ said Ren.

  ‘Yes!’ said Jonathan. ‘Fucking leave me alone with the happiness bullshit! I don’t think I can take this any more! I feel like I’m losing my mind, here. All you people looking at me! It’s fucking driving me insane!’

  Snap. Snap. Show your hand.

  ‘Jonathan, we found traces of Hope’s blood in the living room,’ said Ren. ‘Do you know how that got there?’

  ‘She cut her finger, I don’t know. Were they drops, smears, spatters?’

  Go, CSI.

  ‘If they were drops or smears,’ he said, ‘then she cut her finger a while back. If they were spatters, then, I guess, someone might have killed her at home, right? Is that your point?’

  How Not to Talk to Law Enforcement 101.

  Ren looked at Everett.

  Jonathan started to cry. ‘I love Hope. I always have. From when I was nine years old. I wouldn’t lay a finger on her. All I ever want to do is protect her.’ He cried harder. ‘What if you find her and she’s dead?’

  Wow. Have you really only thought about that now?

  He kept talking. ‘What if she’s there in all that garbage and she’s dead? Then what happens? Then do you just, like, assume it’s me? What evidence is going to be on that body at that stage? I’m terrified of what’s going to go down. I want Hope found, but I also don’t want her to be just pulled out of some garbage. I mean, I know what you’re thinking, it’s disgusti
ng anyway, it’s a murder, who gives a shit, but I do.’ He went quiet. ‘I do, because Hope would. She wouldn’t want anyone seeing her that way.’

  ‘What way?’ said Ren, keeping her tone neutral.

  Jonathan leapt from his seat. ‘Dead on a garbage heap! What do you think I mean? Why do you people always think I mean something I don’t mean?’

  Because you say weird shit. Because your answers are weird. Your phraseology. Your language. Your focus.

  ‘Sit the fuck down,’ said Ren.

  Jonathan sat down, but kept talking, the words speedy and tumbling. ‘Dead after weeks, rotting away and all that other shit. Jesus! Who would ever want anyone to see them that way? I know I never would. But what happens then? I say nothing to you today because I know nothing and then you arrest me? Like, will I look suspicious to you because of that? I mean, I’ll say anything not to come across as someone shady. I wasn’t there that night at the time you’re talking about. I was working! I’m not thinking about how Hope looks because I killed her in some horrible way. I’m thinking about what a fucked-up mess dead bodies are after all that time.’

  2

  Ren closed the door behind her and walked with Everett into the bullpen – the open-plan office the task force worked out of. Their boss, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Dettling, had his own office. The admin team had theirs. There were two interview rooms, two conference rooms, an A/V room, two cells, rest rooms, a creaky elevator, a haunted basement – everything brought together under the roof of one of Denver’s oldest buildings, The Livestock Exchange Building – an icon of cowboy heritage.

  ‘Well?’ said Gary, looking up, hands on his hips. He was a fit and handsome man of few words.

  I am tiring of you, Gary. The look that says ‘impress me’, ‘prove yourself to me’ every time. Your smart-ass bullshit. Everything.

  ‘Early morning landfill search it is!’ said Ren.

  Gary’s face said it all.

  Ren looked at Everett. ‘I don’t know about you, but is Briar just a dumb asshole?’

  ‘That’s in no doubt,’ said Everett.

  ‘I get that he doesn’t have a face for TV,’ said Ren, ‘and that indefinably weird shit falls out of his mouth, but …’ She shrugged. ‘Does he say things that raise my suspicion because he is guilty or because he is just dumb, dumb, dumb? Because he has no filter? Because he cannot understand that in an interview with a Fed, you might want to not say some of the shit your low-flying brain fires out? I mean, even if you just imagine the physical distance between your brain and your mouth – that’s time to pause, isn’t it? Pause while it’s at your nostrils or something. God, do you ever feel like the world is just populated with a lot of really dumb people? His face! I want to slap it.’

  She drew breath.

  You are all looking at me funny. Am I talking too fast again? Keep up, bitches. Jesus.

  ‘So, here’s what we know,’ said Ren. ‘Hope Coulson was last seen, alone, at eight thirty p.m. leaving Good Shepherd Church on East 7th Avenue where she’d gone to host a youth meeting. Everyone else had left ahead of her – a person walking by ID’d her. She was to drive right home – that’s what she told Jonathan. He was out working at the pizza place, her last text to him at eight fifteen p.m. was “See you at home, kiss kiss”. That’s it. We have no witnesses. There are no HALO cams in the immediate vicinity.’

  Denver had over one hundred HALO – High Activity Location Observation – cameras, all monitored from a central location by DPD.

  ‘Hope Coulson’s car was still in the church parking lot the next morning,’ said Ren. ‘Did she leave her car because she was planning on drinking? Wouldn’t she need her car to get to work the next morning? Was she having an affair? In that case, again, why wouldn’t she drive home if she was planning to take a guy back there? Unless she was going back to his place.’ She shrugged. ‘And if she was going for a drink alone, wouldn’t she have chosen somewhere near her apartment? She was a twenty-minute drive from there. So she either walked a route with no HALO cams, or someone drove by and picked her up. But this can’t have been pre-arranged on her phone, because there were no calls or texts to indicate that. And nothing came up with friends, family, acquaintances, work, church members, etc. The neighborhood canvas came up empty. We have a list of vehicles and owners with no priors.’

  ‘Could something have happened at the church?’ said Everett. ‘I don’t know – someone made a pass at her. Maybe she needed to go have a drink, calm down … she decided to have another …’ He paused. ‘Yet, no one from the local bars ID’d her. Her face has been everywhere. At this point, we would have heard something.’

  ‘My gut is just not liking Jonathan Briar for this,’ said Ren.

  ‘How many times has the partner killed the wife or girlfriend in the house at night, then claimed they never made it home?’ said Gary.

  ‘Many, many times,’ said Ren. ‘Just this is not one of them.’

  As everyone dispersed, Ren sat down at her desk and dragged her keyboard toward her. She started typing up her notes, super speedy. Her phone rang.

  Go away.

  She kept typing.

  Fuck. Off.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Her cell phone beeped.

  Jesus Christ.

  She glanced at the text. It was from Gary: Pick up.

  She picked up. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Can you come into my office, please?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ren. ‘What’s the emergency? Nothing you can say over the phone?’

  Silence.

  Alrighty then.

  She walked into Gary’s office.

  ‘You stink,’ said Gary.

  ‘Wait ’til you smell me after the landfill search,’ said Ren, sitting down.

  Gary was staring at her.

  ‘Hold on – are you serious?’ said Ren. ‘What do you mean stink? Literally?’

  ‘In a way that tells me if I don’t open a window, I’ll have to check my own blood-alcohol level.’

  Oh.

  Shit.

  ‘Please tell me,’ said Gary, ‘that you did not go drinking last night with some lost soul you picked up at your meeting.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Ren. ‘I didn’t even have a meeting last night.’ Which is the truth.

  ‘Just remember you’re not there to make friends,’ said Gary. ‘Or even eye contact. The rule is you walk in there alone, you walk out alone.’

  ‘That’s me – Renegade.’ She fired an imaginary gun. She paused. ‘Was that your way of trying to find out if I’m going to my meetings?’

  He eyeballed her. ‘Lose the tone. This is about my concern that you are over the blood-alcohol level this morning.’

  ‘I apologize for my tone,’ said Ren. ‘And yes, I did drink last night. As people often do after work, meeting or no meeting. Is that forbidden? Is the whole of Safe Streets fired?’ Stop. Talking.

  Gary dared her to hold eye contact with him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ren.

  ‘Go.’

  Eight hours later, Ren and Everett were six drinks down in a new bar off Sixteenth Street.

  ‘Do not let me drink tonight,’ said Ren.

  They laughed. Ren looked around her. ‘There is nothing more unattractive to me than a group of men in their late forties in leisurewear on a night out,’ said Ren. ‘Especially the ones who were once hot, you can see the traces, and now they’re just beat-down and filled with loss and white carbs.’

  ‘Jesus, Ren.’ Everett craned his neck. ‘I need to see who you are savaging. “Filled with loss and white carbs” …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Ren. ‘And, really, can something be filled with loss? Like, with an absence of something. But why abandon all hope at that age? You’ve half your life left. Go to the fucking gym.’ Like Ben. Like Gary. Like you. ‘And I say this while not actually finding super-buff bodies attractive.’

  ‘Which makes no sense,’ said Everett.

  ‘I mai
ntain that a lot of unhappiness in life is caused by people trying to make sense of things,’ said Ren. ‘Try this: for one week when someone says something strange to you, just say to yourself “interesting and senseless, goodbye”. Like, goodbye to considering it any further.’

  ‘If I did that, I don’t think I could actually carry out my job,’ said Everett.

  ‘OK – maybe restrict it just to things I say.’

  ‘The things I can do with those reclaimed hours,’ said Everett. ‘Go to the gym, for example.’

  ‘Shall we dance?’ said Ren. ‘It’s filthy rap.’

  ‘Yes, we shall,’ said Everett.

  They hit the empty dance floor and immediately drew attention. Everett was clean-cut, dark-haired, side-parted kind of handsome. Ren had an exotic look of wild abandon.

  ‘And so they danced, and the eyes of the onlookers fell upon them!’ said Ren into his ear.

  This is high-larious!

  Everett was laughing at her, but when he really started to move, Ren was the one who had to fall away to the side she was laughing so hard. He was an excellent dancer.

  They went back to the bar and slumped into their seats.

  I am soooo shitfaced. ‘I think I look like a whore when I dance the way I really want to dance.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Everett. ‘Don’t ever change.’

  ‘And you dance like no one is looking,’ said Ren. ‘Pinterest gold.’

  At two a.m., a cab with Ren in it pulled up outside the home of Annie Lowell, a dear Bryce family friend, who had allowed Ren to house-sit her beautiful, historic home while she was touring Europe.

  ‘This is me!’ said Ren, reaching forward and handing the driver twenty dollars.

  She looked out the window. Then back at the driver.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t live here any more.’

  3

  It was a beautiful ninety-degree morning in Denver: the landfill site sweltered under the same sun that was giving everyone else’s day a glorious start. Ren was sitting in the passenger seat of her Jeep.

  This cannot be my life.

  Outside, the rest of Safe Streets were already dressed in white Tyvek suits, Kevlar gloves, and black half-face masks, sharing a range of looks that covered misery, repulsion, sorrow, and panic.