Forgotten Pieces

THE RIKER COUNTY Sheriff’s Department was quiet. Not that that was a bad thing but after the morning he’d had, Matt was itching to work a case. Anything to distract him from the storm of emotions raging through him. If he was being objective, he knew he’d be surprised at how one woman could affect him so completely. Then again, that woman was Maggie Carson. If she was good at anything it was leaving lasting impressions.

Without opening the bottom drawer, he imagined the picture within it. Erin Walker, smiling up at him. His beautiful wife. Unaware that a year later she’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Matt fisted his hands on the top of his desk.

“So you’re ticked off, huh?” A knock pulled his attention to the doorway and the man standing inside it. Sheriff Billy Reed wasn’t frowning but he wasn’t smiling, either. “I heard you answered a suspicious persons call on your way in this morning. A potential breaking and entering?”

Matt opened his hands slowly. He sighed.

Billy wasn’t just his sheriff, he was also one of Matt’s closest friends. There wasn’t any use trying to hedge around the truth. Or flat out lie.

“The only suspicious person was the woman who called in the false report to get me there in the first place. I should have let a deputy handle it but she asked specifically for me. It was a trap,” he admitted, earning an eyebrow raise from his boss, “set by Maggie Carson.”

Billy’s demeanor shifted to understanding. He might not have been sheriff five years ago but that didn’t mean he’d missed what had happened. Or why Matt had such an issue with Maggie.

“What did she want? I thought she hasn’t tried to talk to you in years.”

Matt tried to keep his rising anger in check.

“She said she had a lead that proves Erin’s death wasn’t an accident.”

Billy scowled, disapproval shrouding his expression.

“What’s the lead?”

“Hell if I know. I didn’t give her the chance to tell me,” he admitted. “She doesn’t have the best track record with me.”

“I thought she would have moved on from the case,” Billy said. “I wonder what it was she thought she found.” Behind his words was a new curiosity. And, if Matt hadn’t been so close to the situation, he would have listened to his own need to know. However, he was too close. And apparently, unlike Maggie, he had moved on.

“Maybe she’s tired of writing magazine fluff pieces,” Matt offered. “And now she’s trying to claw her way back to the news spotlight by digging up the past she has no business digging up.”

Billy stepped into the office. It was small and the bull pen of deputies started a few feet away. The sheriff must not have wanted them to hear what he was about to say, though. He lowered his voice.

“But what about the anonymous tip we got six months ago? Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out?”

Matt started to bristle. He’d been completely blindsided when he’d received a call from a man who claimed the same thing Maggie had. That the car accident that had killed Erin and one other pedestrian, hadn’t been an accident at all. At the time the anonymous caller refused to identify himself unless Matt drove to Georgia to meet him. He’d only told Billy and the chief deputy, Suzy Simmons. They’d gone to the meet location together, only to find a note left with a waitress that read “I’m sorry.” Matt and Suzy had stuck around to try to track down the man but they hadn’t had any luck.

“That man could have been unstable or bored or both,” he said. “For all we know Maggie could have orchestrated the whole thing.” Even as he said it, Matt doubted his words. Whatever his issues with Maggie, he didn’t think she was that malicious. He let out another long breath. “I just—I’ve finally gotten to a good place with what happened to Erin,” Matt admitted. “And until I find some hard evidence that the accident that killed my wife wasn’t an accident at all, then I’d prefer to not start up and drag another investigation along.”

Billy nodded.

“And I don’t blame you for that,” he said. “If Maggie gives you any more trouble, let me know.” He cracked a smile and tapped the badge on his belt. “I’m not afraid to use this thing.”

Matt thanked him and spent the rest of the day avoiding any and all thoughts of Maggie, anonymous tips that led nowhere and an investigation he had drowned himself in years before. It wasn’t until he had left the department and was driving home in the setting sun that he didn’t have to distract himself from his thoughts. Instead, when his phone rang and the caller ID read “Dwayne,” Matt felt his lips pull up into a genuine smile. It had been months since he’d talked to the retired detective and, if he was being honest, his mentor.

“Well, it’s been a hot minute,” Matt answered, forgoing any formal greeting. He’d once spent an entire week fishing with the man. Any need for formalities between them had sunk to the bottom of the river along with the faulty lures Matt had purchased. “How’ve you—”

“Don’t,” someone yelled. But it wasn’t Dwayne and it wasn’t into the phone. Instead, it was in the background. And it was a woman. “Don’t do it!” A scream tore through the airwaves and, even though Matt couldn’t tell who it was, he made a hard U-turn.

“Dwayne?” he yelled into the phone. “Dwayne!”

A thud that made Matt’s stomach go cold preceded the phone call ending.

Matt called the number back. It went straight to voice mail. His car filled with obscenities in between calling dispatch and navigating to the outskirts of the city of Kipsy, right in the middle of the department’s jurisdiction. Matt had been to the former detective’s house on more than one occasion so when he pulled up and cut his engine, he knew outside the phone call that something was really wrong.

The screened-in front porch—a point of pride from the man, so mosquitos couldn’t eat him up while he enjoyed a beer or two—was left open, the door to it off its hinges. The wicker furniture was scattered around the space. Nothing else on the outside looked disturbed but what he’d seen was enough.

Without waiting for backup, Matt got out of his car as quietly as he could. If he hadn’t heard the woman scream he might have been more cautious. But he had. Which meant his gun came out and his attention turned to the house.

A small SUV he didn’t recognize was parked at the side but Dwayne’s truck was nowhere to be seen. Lights were on inside the house but as Matt got closer, he didn’t hear any voices or movement. The darkness of night had fallen around him, offering cover, but it also might give an assailant the same advantage. It was a thought that made him slow as he got to the front door. It was cracked open. Something Dwayne would never do.

Matt held his gun high and pushed the door the rest of the way open, adrenaline spiking and ready to confront whatever had gone wrong.

Or so he thought.

“What the hell?”

The room looked like a tornado had torn through it. Furniture was overturned, books and trinkets were scattered and, with a drop of his gut, Matt realized blood was smeared across parts of the hardwood floor. Which shouldn’t have been surprising, considering Dwayne was lying in the middle of the room, beaten badly, bloodied and unmoving.

What Matt couldn’t have prepared himself for was the body next to Dwayne’s.

It was Maggie. She was holding a bat covered in blood in one hand while a folder was next to the other. Matt felt like he was dreaming as his eyes focused on the name written across the top of it.

It was his name.

Chapter Two (#u8fa25e4c-ec79-5818-8fd1-6c1d0da32fbf)

It was her college graduation party all over again. Or, rather, the aftermath of it. Maggie’s head was pounding. Worse than the hangover she’d had after her roommate, Barb, had decided bringing cake-flavored vodka was a good idea. While it had been a hit at the time, Maggie had felt like she was the one who had been hit the next day.

Which was how she felt as she sat on a hospital bed, staring at an IV in one arm and a pair of handcuffs around her other wrist. It connected her to the hospital bed and, according to a deputy she didn’t know, had been an order. It was one of many things that had confused her since she’d come to in an ambulance, staring up at a woman asking her what her name was and if she could hear her.

While Maggie knew the hospital staff was doing all they could to make sure she was getting the treatment she needed, they sure as heck hadn’t bothered to fill her in on a few details. Like why she’d wound up in an ambulance to begin with, where she had been before the ambulance had been called and why she was barefoot. That last detail, of all things, irrationally bothered her more than the rest. Because, much like the aftermath of her graduation party, she seemed to be missing a chunk of memory. This time, though, she hadn’t the faintest idea what had prompted it.

A knock sounded on the door before a nurse pushed it open.

“How are you doing, Ms. Carson?”

A redheaded woman with bold lipstick and an easy smile slid into the room. When her gaze went to the handcuffs that smile tightened. Maggie decided to address the obvious.

“I’d really like to not be handcuffed,” she said. “And to not be in the hospital. Neither were on my to-do list today. Or, at least I don’t remember them if they were.”

The nurse gravitated over to the IV.

“The cuffs I can’t help,” she admitted. “But what I can do is ask how your head is feeling. So, Ms. Carson, how is your head?” She met Maggie’s stare. It was a look that was equal parts concerned and authoritative. She was trying to do her job and Maggie was being snarky. She sighed.

“There are few people in this world who ever use my last name and usually it’s when they’re about to yell at me. So, please, call me Maggie. But on the head-hurting front, it’s throbbing. Not as bad as before, but it’s there.”

The nurse looked at Maggie’s chart.