What Lies Beneath

Chapter 6

Her head was killing her. Olivia sat with her elbows resting on her desk, rubbing slow circles along her throbbing skull. It is eight in the morning and she barely had enough energy to keep her head upright. Hearing Fiona’s confession yesterday had put her in a mood that usually landed her with one of these nasty headaches. The best cure for a hangover is work. Yet, she could not stop the whimper that escaped her lips as she pulls the next file from the stack.

Dona Holden.

They found the victim face down in the river with a fractured skull. Olivia had sympathy for the poor girl–her head was killing her too. Even though it might appear so, she did not drown. The coroner’s report had no sign of water in the lungs. The head injury, however, seemed to have done her in. The murderer had probably panicked and dumped the body in the river, hoping it would appear that the victim had drowned. If it wasn’t for the head injury, the extreme amount of alcohol found in her system would have probably supported the drowning cover up, but that would only have held until the coroner’s report came in. She opened up her laptop to search the database for the evidence.

No results found.

“What? This cannot be right,” she muttered to herself. Looking through the file, she saw that most of the evidence boxed up in the evidence room. This was normally the situation when there was a lot of evidence for a case, not all of it could fit into a file. As she made her way to the evidence room upstairs, she could not make sense of it. The case is only two years old, run cold. Despite that, the evidence needs to be logged into the database as soon as it became available. That’s how it’s done back in New York.

Inserting her code on the keypad, the locked clicked, and she pushed inside. Sensors picked up her movement and automatically switched on the lights. It took a few moments for all the lights to flicker on and illuminate the daunting space.

They kept evidence for five years before they moved it out to a larger storage facility. All information must be captured in case the evidence goes missing or if the system crashes. There would always be a backup of either.

The room took up a half the space of the entire second floor it was big and creepy as hell. Five long rows of steel shelves running along the length of the room holding all the evidence of cases solved, unsolved and some pending. Each row represented a specific year, then filed alphabetically within that year. Heading over to twenty-fifteen, Olivia searched for Holden, D.

Hall

Harrison

Hill

Hughes

It was not there.

“Oh, come on!” She threw her hands in the air, the file nearly went flying out of her hand. She headed back to the first row of shelves and checked section H. She checked each year and came up empty.

“s**t, dammit!” With slumped shoulders and a hanging head, she returns to the first row and stood miserably before A.

It was nearly three in the afternoon when she emerged from the evidence room. She felt like a bear coming out of hibernation; she was hungry and very cranky. Olivia suppressed the urge to slam the steel wire door shut in frustration, but she just closed it behind her in defeat. There was only one place left to search, and the mere thought of it made her want to throw up.

At her desk, she resumed her head massage from this morning while deciding whether she should head over to the storage facility now or tomorrow morning with a good night’s sleep and semi-fresh brain.

“Detective Pearson?” Startled, her head snapped up much too fast, causing a shooting pain through her skull that nearly blinded her. Clasping her head in her hands, she breathed through the t*****e, praying to all that was holy for its end. “Are you feeling ill, Detective?”

She looked at Detective Ambrose with one eye. “Splitting headache,” she mumbled.

“Having a bad day?”

“The worst.” The pain had mercifully subsided to a persistent dull throbbing as her pulse normalized by each passing second. Katherine gave Olivia a sympathetic smile and headed for the stairs, but stopped mid-stride to backtrack. “I just remembered you needed my help yesterday. I have the rest of the day open?”

“Oh, right?” Was it only yesterday that Olivia had solved a case? A case no one knows she had solved because the said file was still in her drawer. “No, I have got the answers I needed. Thank you, though.”

“No worries. I don’t mind helping.” She leaned a shoulder to the frame of Olivia’s office door–seemingly in the mood for company.

“Is your situation from yesterday under control?” Olivia wondered. She was still trying to be more sociable.

“Men are such morons.” Katherine rolled her eyes. “My partner flew solo and apprehend a fleeing murderer all by himself. Mason can be such a pain in…” Her head turned to the side just as Olivia heard a voice of gravel tell someone to f**k off. Maybe Olivia wasn’t the only one having a bad day. Detective Ambrose smirked in the voice’s direction. “Talk of the devil.” She winked at Olivia before her attention went back toward the exasperated voice. “Mason, have you met Detective Pearson yet?”

Without a response, a head of short dark hair bent over a cell phone came into view. After muttering another curse, he shoved the offending thing in his back pocket and turned his head towards Olivia. When his grey eyes landed on her, her breath caught.

“Detective Pearson, this is my partner, Detective Mason Riley.” Olivia’s mouth went dry and suspected the moisture had pooled elsewhere. Her eyes were following the mesmerizing movements of his lips–he could curse her mother for all she heard. Her eyes leisurely traveled from his lips to his confused eyes. It took her brain far too long to realize she was staring at a frowning face.

“Sorry?” Olivia stammered.

He quirked an eyebrow “I said, welcome to the force, Detective Pearson.”

“Right, yes. Thank you,” Olivia muttered in embarrassment.

Nodding once, he headed for the stairs, totally unaware of the fact that her heart was beating a mile a minute. Katherine gave her a knowing smile. “Handsome bastard, isn’t he?” And then followed her partner up the stairs to their shared office.

In utter mortification, she hurried to the bathroom next door to splash some cold water on her heated face; which did not help. What the hell was that? She thought. Olivia had never experienced such an intense reaction to a man. She had met plenty of handsome men throughout her life, so she could not understand this response her body was subjecting her to.

It was unsettling. Taking a few moments to pull herself together, she took a deep breath and went back to her office.

She would have to stay far, far away from Detective Mason Riley, she decided.

Having just elected to leave the storage facility for tomorrow, Olivia opened the file once more. There is still some time before the day ran out. Everything in the file kept on referring to the evidence–evidence she didn’t have. The only thing left was going through the persons of interest list. Dona Holden’s immediate family cleared with confirmed alibis, except for an estranged brother. No one bothered to contact him since he has been in England for the last five years. It might have been an oversight not to make sure of the fact. Olivia made a note next to his name to check if he had traveled back to the States from the time he has been away.

Everyone else had alibis, the boyfriend with whom she broke up a week before. The best friend suspected of jealousy. The best friend’s boyfriend suspected of harboring a secret infatuation - hence the jealous best friend. The best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend was an accessory after the fact.

This was reading like a really cheesy criminal show script. A loner peeked up at Olivia from the bottom of the list, Finley Scott. No substantial relationship with any of the other people on the list, nor her family. He was spotted chatting with her at a party the night she was killed–explains the alcohol in her system.

It would seem that Finley Scott also had an alibi–his girlfriend, Amanda Brooks, had confirmed he was with her from five pm the day of the party and had not left until the following afternoon. His DNA had not made it back from the Lab either. That’s saying if it ever made it there in the first place. Olivia was going to have to dissect every alibi if she didn’t find that evidence box tomorrow.

Her stomach dropped to the floor when the manager of the storage facility rolled up the large door leading to the boxes and boxes of evidence. Boxes that were not exactly kept in any particular order. Carelessly shoved into any opening available. It would take a week to sift through the first row of boxes. Finding the right box will be nearly impossible, but definitely improbable. Despite this, Olivia tried her luck and scanned the pile closest to the door. She kept going until her arms grew tired even so, she came up empty.

She couldn’t even ask the detective who worked the case if he knew what happened to the evidence. When Olivia had asked another investigator where she could find Detective Collins, they informed her he got killed on duty. They divided his cases between the remaining detectives. Bad timing to get yourself killed, Detective Collins! Olivia had thought.

The chief was exactly where she expected him to be, in his chair, scowling at his computer. “Chief?” Without looking up, he motioned for her to take a chair. Olivia idly wondered if he was even aware of who he just invited into his office. His two index fingers were hitting the keys with an excessive force. It made her cringed a little. She hoped her name was nowhere to be found amongst his furious typing. While waiting for him to finish, she distracted herself on her phone when his voice broke through her mindless scrolling of the news app it came out with.

“Solved a case yet, Detective?” He smiled expectantly.

“Not yet, Sir.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. Olivia knew this was unethical and plain wrong, but she had promised Fiona the week. Olivia was going to hand deliver the file to the Prosecutor on Friday. She had to suppress a smile when an idea popped into her head. The Prosecutor will not be looking at that file until Monday morning if she dropped it off just before five pm.

“What can I do for you?”

“The entire box of evidence appears to be missing.” She handed the file over. “There is no evidence captured, nothing in the evidence room either. I just came back after checking the storage facility downtown. The place is a mess.”

He was still considering the file as she laid it all down, flipping through the documents, and clearly looking for something. Shaking his head, he handed it back. “Where is the sign over sheet? The person responsible for the evidence has to sign it before capturing the evidence.”

“No sign over sheet there,” Olivia confirmed.

“I’m sorry, but there isn’t much I can do about this, Olivia. Check with Maggie upstairs, nothing here escapes her notice,” he suggested.

Olivia hasn’t even thought about Maggie. “Thank you, Sir.” He offered her a rueful smile. But a smile won’t cut it here. She needed that evidence box.