He found Kennett hanging out in the bar at the Renaissance Hotel in Toledo, where they decided to spend another night to rest, recharge, and come up with a new game plan. The bar, like the hotel itself, was more serviceable than fancy. Fine place to sit and have a drink and decompress—which Michael desperately needed to do.
His hair still felt damp from a refreshing shower, and from the looks of it, Kennett had cleaned up as well. Wearing a blue polo, signature blazer draped over the back of his barstool, Michael got a good look at the detective’s fit physique. Kennett sipped a drink idly from an ice-filled tumbler, appearing quite relaxed for a guy who’d been chasing bad leads across the Midwest. Kennett’s cop sense must have kicked in when Michael arrived, because he spun around on his stool to issue him a greeting before Michael had a chance to say a single word.
“Hey there, Mikey,” Kennett said as he patted the stool next to him. Before Michael could get settled in his seat, Kennett handed him a drink menu.
“Get anything you want, Mike,” Kennett said, “and by anything, I mean nothing that costs more than twenty bucks.”
Kennett gave a little chuckle, but Michael knew he was also being serious, so he ordered a Wild Turkey, neat.
“How you doing there?” Kennett asked. “I know it’s hard to come so close and yet be so far.”
Kennett eyed Michael up and down carefully the way a doctor might when giving a patient an exam.
“I’m a little discouraged, to be honest,” Michael admitted. “I don’t think I’m cut out to do your job.”
He took a long, slow drink of his bourbon, embracing the burn as it settled in his throat.
Kennett huffed his agreement—or disagreement, Michael wasn’t entirely sure.
“Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me. But maybe we should end it. I’ll pay for your flight back to Boston, New York, wherever you want to go. I’ll stay and look for Natalie and the kids because I’m sure they’re somewhere in the Midwest. You’ve got big violent crimes to solve. I’m grateful for your help, I really am, but this is my problem to solve.”
Michael would have paid double the airfare to rid himself of the uncertainty and guilt that came with having Kennett’s help.
“To be honest with ya, Mike,” Kennett said with a laissez-faire air, “looking for your wife has made me rethink my job. I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed a break from the violence. Seeing what people do to each other, how callous and cruel they can be, living with that day in and day out really gets to you.”
Again, Michael shifted uneasily in his stool. He didn’t like the way Kennett kept looking at him, as if he were a part of that problem.
“I imagine those cases stay with you,” said Michael, who spoke too brightly for the subject, but he’d done so with the hope of easing some of the odd tension between them.
“Stays with you like ghosts,” Kennett answered wistfully. “Even when you put the bad guys where they belong, it doesn’t take the sting out of it. You still saw what you saw. That never goes away. No matter how much time a perp spends behind bars, the memory of what they did lingers.”
“I bet,” replied Michael, who kept his response intentionally brief. He hoped his message to Kennett was clear: let’s change the subject. To drive that point home, Michael turned his attention to the TV above the bar, which was broadcasting some sports game—didn’t matter what or who was playing. Better that than meeting Kennett’s hard stare, which Michael could feel like a cold hand gripping the back of his neck.
“You know what’s really hard to take, Mike? What sticks with you the longest?” Kennett said brusquely. He didn’t seem to mind that he was addressing the back of Michael’s head.
Michael didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to avert his gaze from the TV, but Kennett rapped his knuckles against the bar to make sure the focus went to him. “I’m talking the really hard cases.”
Once again, Michael felt forced to face Kennett. “No,” he said, as a tight band closed around his throat.
An unsettling gleam entered Kennett’s eyes. He seemed to be relishing Michael’s evident unease.
“I bet you think it’s the cold cases,” said Kennett. “Most people do, and sure, those are tough, but you still have a hope you’ll get your perp. It could be next week, next year, a decade from now, and that kind of keeps you going.”
“I’m sure it does,” Michael seconded.
“The hard cases, Mike,” Kennett went on, as if he were giving a lecture, “are the ones when you get your guy, dead to rights, you’ve got ’em, you know who did it, and yet they still walk free. A technicality during the arrest, a blown case in court—whatever the reason, you have your killer, no question about it, but they walk. Those are the cases that really haunt you. That’s the shit you don’t ever forget. I’ve got a long memory for that kind of thing. That’s what I’ve got. A long memory. Blessing and a curse.”
Kennett downed his drink in one long gulp. Michael heard the ice cubes rattling inside the tumbler like a pair of casino dice, a reminder that accepting Kennett’s offer to help find Natalie was definitely a gamble. With the drink gone, Kennett tapped the bar, ordered another. It felt as if a harsh wind had blown through the room, chilling Michael to the bone.
“It’s only happened a handful of times in my career, but the first one—now that was the hardest of them all, because it was personal.”
“I guess we’re going there,” Michael mumbled to himself, feeling pressured to look Kennett in the eyes. Again, he didn’t like what he saw.
“I didn’t find the body,” Kennett began. “A jogger did. Hell, that’s why I don’t run. Joggers always find the body.”
If that was supposed to get a laugh out of Michael, it didn’t.
“She was sixteen years old, beautiful girl, whole life in front of her. I wasn’t much older, twenty-three at the time, new on the force, a rookie cop who came from a family of cops. Her killer strangled her and then slit her throat from ear to ear before dumping her body in a marsh. She’d been missing for two weeks. Wasn’t a pretty sight when we found her.”
“Grim,” said Michael, trying to ignore his growing unease.
Ghosts.
Michael tried to calm himself.
It’s going to be a serial killer … not a boyfriend …
“Didn’t take long for us to lock in on a suspect,” said Kennett. “The boyfriend. Dated her two years and she’d recently called it off.”
Oh shit …
Where was it? When did it happen? Her name … what’s her name?
Michael wasn’t sure how to ask those questions without implicating himself in the process.
Kennett continued.
“Phone records showed the victim was in touch with this guy at least three times before her murder. The mother wasn’t too keen on the relationship. Didn’t want her daughter dating anybody. Real strict, religious type—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it created a lot of friction at home.”
Mother’s name is Helen.
“Mom tried a number of times to force a breakup, but the boyfriend always managed to win her back, until that one time he didn’t.”