He shrugs.“But it’s in a casket.”
“Well, I don’t—”
“You can take lead on this one, Mackenzie.”
“What?Why?”Rachel says, heated.“Can’t you give it to Garrison?I’m still on the Cooper case.”
And I don’t want to behereany longer than I have to.
“Except the Cooper case is solved,” Green says, anger threading his tone like coarse twine.“John Cooper—”
“I don’t want to do this with you, Gary, I really don’t,” Rachel interrupts.“But we still don’t have a body, there’re still too many unanswered questions.”
“Enough,” he snaps, and Rachel swallows as she sees Reverend Holland glance over out of the corner of her eye.
“Sir,” she begins again, feeling her face grow warm and silently cursing it.
“It’s done, Mackenzie.Let it go, for God’s sake.We’ll find Stacy Cooper’s body in the lake eventually.Give that poor woman some peace.”
Rachel’s mouth falls open but she catches herself, presses her lips together and raises her chin.She’stryingto give Tamara Cooper some peace by solving the fucking case, by giving her real information as to what actually happened to her daughter.
“Look,” Green says, with an exasperated sigh that makes Rachel know he’s hit the limit of how much so-called insubordination he’ll tolerate from her today.How muchtruth, more like.“You say there’s still too many questions in the Cooper case, and there are.I’ll give you that.But that’s true about any case,” he continues.“This is your job, Mackenzie.Drop the Cooper case.You’re on this one now.”
Rachel clenches her fist around her pen.“Yes, sir.”
“Start with the cemetery records.If we can tie this off as a mistake, I’d prefer it.”
Rachel bites her tongue so hard she worries she might taste blood.It’s his “preference” for how he wants his cases to turn out that makes him so difficult to work with.You don’t start with a conclusion and work your way backward.
“And tellthem,” he adds, nodding darkly at Julie, Jake, and the reverend, “not to go spouting off about this to anyone.Especiallytoday.Last thing we need is the news finding out a woman’s body’s been discovered.”
Rachel nods.She doesn’t want Tamara Cooper to hear about this, either.She’s had enough visits and phone calls with Stacy’s grief-stricken mother.Each one weighs more than the one before it, and this news might just about break her.
“Not sure what to do about that, though,” Rachel says, indicating the street along the only side of the cemetery that isn’t walled in with tall hedges, encasing it like a secret garden.There are people out on the street in front of six of the ten houses, all watching curiously, drawing their own conclusions.“As soon as they see us cordon it off as a crime scene, it’s game over.”
Yellow tape around the trees, snapping in the wind.
She clears her throat, shakes the image away.Of all the horrendous things she witnessed that night nearly ten years ago, she’s not sure why the yellow tape has stuck with her.
“Well,” Green says with an impatient bite, “we can’t do anything about that but try to tell them it’s nothing.I’ll go talk to ’em.You go into the office and get started on those records.I’ll go back to HQ and send Stevens and Fisher over to help you.And if that secretary”—he frowns in Julie’s direction—“can’t gather all the records because they aren’t organized, then I think we know what happened here, don’t we?”
“Sure, sir,” Rachel says.She can’t say any more without getting in shit.
He smiles, smug.“I think this is good.It’ll finally get you off the Cooper case.It’s time you had another body.”He heads off in the direction of the onlookers, ready to give them a telling-off that will only spark more rumour and speculation.
Rachel watches him go, breathing deep to try to lessen the clenching sensation in her chest.She isn’t sure she’ll ever “get off” the Stacy Cooper case.Not until her body is found and they can deliver some real answers to the girl’s poor mother.
Rachel walks back over to the open hole in the earth, kneels and looks down on the remains of a person.There isn’t a whole lot to see—most of the skeleton is encased in the battered remains of a cheap, splintered casket.She’ll get a better look when the Ident team comes in to exhume it.She’ll take notes and pictures, collate the questions that need to be answered.
And that’s when it really hits her: she’s been so tied up in the Cooper case, but this person here in the Millgate Cemetery is someone else’s unsolved case, their loss.The tragedy they need answers to if they can ever hope to move on.There could be some other Tamara Cooper out there waiting for the truth.
Rachel sighs heavily, and stands.
If there’s one thing she hates, it’s an unanswered question.
CHAPTER 6
EMILY
