Chapter 30
For the next few days I'd planned on working from home. Well, working from Monroe's home while playing nurse. I called in a favor to Daniel to sub in on my trainings.
"So, if I do these for you, what do I get in return?" Daniel asked with his smug grin permeating though the receiver.
"The joy of helping out a colleague in need." I was in no mood to say it sweetly.
"Now come on, Davenport. I'm sure you can do better than that."
My cheeks burned at his arrogance. "I'll sub in for you when you need a day off. How's that?"
"Dinner in Denver."
"Daniel, really?" I scoffed. "You know I'm in a relationship. Why do you keep doing this?"
"It's just dinner. Nothing more, nothing less. I promise," he said, and I could envision him crossing his fingers behind his back.
I shook my head. "Fine. Dinner one night. Nothing else."
"It's a date." He was sporting that boy next door smile of his right now, no doubt. "E-mail me your PowerPoints, and I hope that boyfriend of yours feels better soon." The last part wasn't convincing at all.
I didn't bother to thank him. I scowled as I hung up the phone. Tall, Dark, and Arrogant was such an ass. God, what the hell was I setting myself up for? No sense worrying over it now. Maybe by June he'd forget all about it. I peeked into the living room. Good, Monroe was still deep asleep on the couch. He didn't need to hear that I was making deals with the devil.
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
As the days passed, surprisingly Monroe's wound was getting better, but I was still pushing a trip to the doctor. By Sunday, he was up and moving about the house, pent up with energy. He'd started on coffee, but when that had him too stationary, he'd stopped by his workroom, picking up a clock part to repair.
"Your routine is all messed up." I sighed at him while he tinkered with the clock doo-hickey in the living room, pacing as he twirled his screwdriver.
"Nah, it'll be fine," he assured me. "I've stayed on my diet thanks to you."
"What thanks? I steamed vegetables and bought take out Chinese."
"Hey, it worked." He chuckled, finally sitting down. "But I don't want to see another spring roll for a long while."
My cell phone rang before I could say anything else. I picked it up off of Monroe's coffee table. Nick's name flashed on the screen. Nick had been checking in on Monroe since the incident and had even come over a few times. I answered the phone.
"So, how's the bite today?" he asked me.
"Well, our Blutbad is moving about the house again," I replied as Monroe stood and went back to pacing.
"Good to hear it." Nick paused then said, "Do you think you'd be free to come by here in a bit?"
"Umm, possibly." I glanced up, but Monroe had moved into the kitchen. He couldn't sit still for one minute. "What's going on, Nick?"
"Well, I really don't want to discuss it over the phone, but it concerns your parents."
"My parents?"
"Yeah, just come by, and I'll talk with you then."
"Did Nick say your parents?" Monroe asked as he reentered the living room. He set down two steaming mugs on the coffee table.
I ran my hand through my hair. "Yeah."
"Well, you go on. I've got things to do here, and I'm feeling like I could get in a Pilates workout, maybe two."
"Now don't hurt yourself," I quickly warned. "That place on your leg hasn't healed completely yet."
Monroe gave me a kiss. "I know my limits."
"If that wound opens up we're going to the doctor, and I won't take no for an answer."
"Okay, okay. I'll take it easy." He motioned me on with his hands. "You go on and go over there."
I lifted one of the mugs from the table. "I'm drinking this first."
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
"So, I've been digging through your parent's case." Nick's face was serious as he held a file folder in his hands. "How much do you want to know about what happened?" His blue-green eyes told me it was going to be gruesome.
"Everything," I answered. "I want to know everything." After the things I'd witnessed recently, I deserved to know the truth.
Nick motioned to the trailer bed. "I think you ought to sit down for this."
I perched on the edge of the bed, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want Nick to hold anything back.
Nick sat down in the desk chair and pulled it close beside me. "On August thirtieth, police entered the home of Walter and Suzanne Archer after receiving a call from a neighbor, who'd heard gunshots fired," he began as he read from the file folder. He looked up. "Both vics were found dead and positioned on the couch, but from the blood splatter that's not where they were murdered."
"Someone moved them there?" I just shook my head. How demented.
"It's not uncommon," Nick simply replied. He of all people would've seen something like that before. "The news article you printed out mentioned that both of your parents had been shot at close range to the head," he continued while pointing to the newspaper copy, "but that would be difficult to determine considering the coroner's report stated that your mother was decapitated."
I put my hand to my mouth and gasped. I wasn't able to hold my reaction back. "Decapitated?" The word quavered from my mouth. My hands moved to my neck as I tried to compose myself.
"Renée, you said you wanted to know," Nick reminded me, and I nodded in reply.
"No, I'm fine," I replied while evening my tone. "Go on." It wasn't easy to think that someone had cut off my mom's head. I didn't want the mental image, and I tried to erase it from my mind.
"The M.E. stated that the cut was a single, clean slice across the neck. It was made by a large, sharp instrument." Nick looked up at me as he said that.
"So, it was Reapers," I managed to say as I recalled holding the scythe in my hands. The sharp blade would've gone through anything.
"I can only assume, but it appears that way."
Did my dad know these details? He had as much access to these types of records as Nick did. Maybe that was why he'd worked so hard to fake my birth records. To anyone else this had to look insane for anyone to cut off another person's head. It was insane to me, and I was privy to much more information.
"Please, go on," I encouraged, taking a slow breath in to allow my practiced calm to take over. I wanted to know what happened. The severity of the incident couldn't hold me back.
"Your dad was shot once in the head just as the article mentioned," Nick said in the same tone as someone talking about the weather. "The reports state that the shot was more than close range. From the ballistics report the gun was pressed against the vic's left temple by the apparent powder burns."
He said it so easily. Must be nice to be immune to these things. But given his job, something like this was probably routine. Regardless, it was unnerving how emotionally unattached he was about the details. I kept my calm and let him continue.
"They traced the 9mm bullet they extracted from the vic to a Luger Parabellum 08, which wasn't a current model. The company that manufactured the bullets was Deutsche Waffen und Munit…" Nick let me look at the words on the page.
"Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken." I pronounced the German. "It means German Weapons and Munitions Factory."
"So, this company made these bullets back in the early 1900s. I checked with a friend in our ballistics department. Most of these weapons had silencers. So if this was like most weapons…"
"Then how did a neighbor hear the shot?" I chimed in.
"Exactly. So there may have been something else going on other than just a concerned call to police."
"But this doesn't make sense," I said. "A Reaper carrying a gun? I just don't see that."
"I admit, the scythe of that one Reaper who came at me seemed like enough of a weapon on its own," Nick replied with a heavy sigh. "But here's where it gets even stranger. Time of death didn't match the first vic. The M.E. stated there was at least a two hour difference between the decapitation and the head shot."
"Two hours? It must have been two different people… two killers."
Nick nodded. "It's leaning toward that."
I reached for one of the pillows on the trailer bed, clutching it involuntarily. "But why… how?"
"Maybe your mom was the only one home when the Reaper came for her. Then your dad came home later where the shooter was waiting for him."
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to think without getting emotional. A Reaper comes for a Grimm. Then her human husband comes home, finds her dead, but then there's this other killer who just happens to be there to shoot him? Why kill my dad? What was the point? No, I couldn't be as immune as Nick was. I opened my eyes and shook the thoughts out.
I pointed to the copy of the newspaper article. "It said nothing was missing. Is that what the file says?" I'd find something else to ask instead.
"There was at least one room that was searched, but the rest of the house was untouched according to the police reports. The room was described as a library, which the report says was in 'complete disarray.'"
"Could it have been Grimm books they were looking for?"
Nick shrugged. "We can only speculate at this point, but it's as good of a hypothesis as any."
My fingers dug into the pillow. "Did the file mention me in any way?"
"A child wasn't mentioned in any of the incident reports." He shook his head. "You must have been someplace else when it happened."
"It doesn't make sense. I was a month old, and my parents were home. Where else would I have been?" I was asking more aloud than directly to Nick.
"The newspaper article mentioned family. Maybe they had another family member in Louisville looking after you?"
"I don't know of any family. And if that's the case, then why didn't this family member take me in when my parents died instead of some friends of theirs?" I was trying hard to figure out the puzzle, but none of it was fitting.
"Hard to say," Nick solemnly replied. "If this was a recent case, I'd suggest we go back and interview the neighbors and friends."
"Well, their friends were my adoptive parents. Maybe I can talk to my mom again. See if she remembers anything."
"Renée, it's important you don't say too much."
I nodded. "I can word it in a way that doesn't sound too suspicious."
"We had a case a few months back of a missing girl that had vanished ten years ago. Did Monroe ever tell you about Holly Clark?"
"The teenage Blutbad in the woods? Yeah."
"Well, that was a cold case, too, but even then we were lucky to find the information we did to put her abductor behind bars. But this one…This case is almost thirty years old. It's going to be hard to get anything substantial after that amount of time." Nick finally showed me some remorse as he put his hand on my shoulder. "But if we can find a missing girl after ten years, then anything is possible."
"There's got to be something else that can help us." I gestured back to the report. "Were there any suspects mentioned?"
"It doesn't list anyone as a suspect. There are general notes about interviewing family and friends, but nothing strong to go by. A neighbor reported a black Caprice, but they didn't get a license plate or enough detail to determine anything more. A trace amount of DNA was found, but it wasn't in the database to match it to anyone."
"DNA? Well then there's hope, right?"
"Like I said, it's been thirty years. Finding these guys, if they're even still alive, is slim to none. There's still a lot of gaps in this." He waved the folder out in his hand. "No wonder it went cold."
"It's fine, Nick," I replied, discarding the pillow. "I wasn't really expecting we'd have all the answers from a few reports," I added, masking my disappointment. The case was cold for a reason, but even so, something significant or useful would've been nice.
"There may still be some evidence we can use." Nick forced a smile my way as he closed the file folder and laid it on the desk. "I'm not giving up yet."
"I appreciate what you've done so far," I said while leaning back on the trailer bed. Had knowing all this really helped me at all? If anything, I was more on edge. These guys were serious, and I had averted two Reapers already. Would the next batch they sent after me be more successful? I shuddered to think.
"I'm still trying to get answers about my parents, too." Nick let out a sigh, running his fingers across his thick bangs. "We're both in the dark, I'm afraid."
"I appreciate that you tried. None of this is easy to deal with."
"If I learn more I'll let you know. For now, just be careful."
"Yeah," I agreed as I stood. "We both need to be careful."
A/N: Okay, so a bit more info on what happened to Renée's real parents. Some things may sound vaguely familiar... Hmm?