Summers cackled while I rolled my eyes. Sometimes I forgot other people, who weren’t joined at the hip with him for eight hours at a stretch, found him funny.
“We get it.” Looking to Summers, I cleared my throat. “I owe you an apology.”
“Who?” She glanced around. “Me? Why?”
“I got miffed when you called Rixton instead of emailing me a response.”
“Us girls have to stick together.” She lifted her mug, I lifted mine, and we clinked them together. “We have to prove ourselves every day and sometimes twice on Sundays. I would never overlook you based on your sex. Even if I had to ping Rixton, as the senior officer, I would still update you on the situation and not let you fly blind.”
I ducked my head. “I appreciate that.”
“Working under Timmons was bound to give you a complex,” Summers allowed. “I can’t say I blame you for looking for shadows where there are none.” She pulled out her phone, started scrolling, and flashed me a glimpse of the home screen on her email app as proof. “Since Wu told me you were on vacation, I figured it was faster to just call Rixton and give him an update.”
Feeling two inches tall, I mumbled further apologetic noises.
“Not that I don’t enjoy meetings perfumed with bacon, ’cause I do,” Rixton said, scratching his cheek, “but was there a reason why you wanted to do this in person?”
Summers pulled a manila envelope off the seat beside her. She held it out, leaving it up to us who made the grab, and Rixton murmured, “Ladies first.”
That was all the encouragement I required. I pinched the clasp, pried up the flap, and hauled out a stack of crime scene photos that left me staring at five charred masses, all about the same size. “How tall was Ms. Orvis?”
“She was five-six according to her license,” Summer supplied. “She weighed about one seventy-five.”
I passed one of the photos to Rixton. “How old were her kids?”
“She had a set of seven-year-old twins, a six-year-old, and a five-year-old.”
“How sure are we the fifth body belonged to Ms. Orvis?” There must have been a reason why they leapt to that assumption given the condition of the bodies. “What am I missing here?”
“Ms. Orvis contracted a rare gum disease in her early twenties and wore false teeth as a result. Considering one of the victims wore dentures, it was a safe assumption the final body belonged to Ms. Orvis.”
“There’s no way a hundred and seventy-five pounds cooked down to this but left dentures behind,” Rixton said, reading my mind. “Were any tissue samples taken? What about the dentures? Were those bagged as evidence or…?”
“The pictures you’re holding? I printed those off out of habit. These days the higher ups want me to stick with digital files for reference unless I’m asked to turn in paper copies of my reports to the various parties involved, but you know how it goes with old dogs and new tricks.” Her lips compressed. “The email containing those photos was erased from my account. It’s gone. I called my guy over at MPD to ask if he would forward me another set.” She lowered her voice. “The files had been scrubbed from the system. Not deleted, wiped clean. This is the only proof those photos existed.”
I leaned back in my seat, tugging on my bottom lip. I could think of one organization whose agents were old pros at making evidence disappear. The fact Wu had paid her a visit bolstered my certainty the NSB had gotten involved. Why erase this crime but not the others? What was different about this scene?
The Hensarling fire gave us three corpses, the Culberson fire gave us a burn victim, and the Orvis fire gave us five bodies. The Hensarling dead had reached the coroner’s office without a hitch, Ivashov had been admitted to the hospital, and yet these five bodies got lost in transit?
I examined each photo again. “Do you have a copy shop in town?”
“I can make any copies you need at my office,” Summers offered.
“No, she’s right.” Rixton gathered the photos into a neat stack and returned them to the envelope. “You’ve got a problem. Until you clean house, it’s safer if we do this on neutral ground.” He tossed some cash on the table. “We can forward you scans if you’d like.”
“You sound like you’re leaving without me. I can’t let those out of my sight. My superiors would skin me alive.” She plucked the folder from his hand. “Let’s go. I’ll feel better knowing there’s at least one more set floating around out there.”
The copy shop was bright and clean, and the self-serve stations were ideal for our use as we set up an assembly line. I scanned the photos and emailed them to Santiago and Miller, figuring their accounts would be the most secure. As I finished, I passed each photo to Rixton, who printed five copies. Once he was satisfied we had all we needed, he passed off the originals to Summers, who tucked them in her folder. Before we parted ways, he passed her one of his collated stacks so she had a spare set.
While they divvied up the goods, I got an email from Santiago. None of the drip torches were a match. Different sizes, ages, manufacturers. Odds were good each had been found on the property it had been used to destroy, theft being a solid second option, rather than our perp going on a shopping spree down at the local Mervin’s. That lead, such as it was, had dead-ended.
Though it must have killed him, Rixton managed to hold his tongue on the topic of Adam Wu until we were on the road back to Canton.
“What do you know about this Wu character?” His fingers drummed the wheel. “Before you answer, you should know your dad called and asked me to run a background check on him since you guys are dating.”
“I’m going to strangle him.” I dropped my face into my hands with a groan. “We aren’t dating, and you can’t go running background checks willy-nilly.”
“What we learned tonight justifies me whipping out a shovel to dig around him.” He tilted his head to one side and then the other, popping vertebrae. “I saw your reaction to him. He makes you nervous, and not in a good way. You all but threw Nettie at my chest then punted me to the curb to get us away from him.” He spared me a quick, searching glance. “Talk to me, Luce. Why did Wu pay you a house call? Why did you go out to dinner with him? Why is he sticking his nose in this case?”
Suspicion from Rixton hurt, but I had earned it ten times over. He was too smart, too honest, and too good at his job to let me get away with vague misdirections and mumbled non-answers for long.
“He doesn’t work for All South.” I placed my sweaty palms on my thighs and gazed ahead while I started laying groundwork for my defection. “He’s a recruiter.”
“A recruiter?” Rixton did a double-take before returning his attention to the road. “For who?”
“The FBI.”
“The FBI,” he echoed. “They’re looking at you?”
His surprise bordered on comical, except this was no laughing matter. “Yeah.”
“Are you looking back?”
“I’m exploring my options.” My fingers curled into throbbing fists. “Kapoor chatted me up during the Claremont case and laid out my options.” Just not the ones Rixton must be imagining. “He mentioned you applied once.”
“I wanted it bad there for a while,” he admitted, “but then I started dating Sherry. It was hard enough on her letting me out the door at night to patrol the streets where we grew up. She knew I was toying with the idea, and she told me upfront she couldn’t handle the big leagues. It wasn’t an ultimatum. It was a statement of fact. She was telling me her hard limits. She had reservations about marrying a cop, and I smoothed them over, but the FBI scared her.” He rubbed his thumb over the curve of his wedding band. “I had to make a choice. The girl or the career. I chose Sherry.”