On his way out of the station, Ryan thanked the detective for his help and they set a time the next day to touch base again. He needed to put some food into his stomach but instead found himself heading straight for the lot where they'd found Brad's body. Food could wait for a little while longer. He needed to see the scene after all of these years. Paying the cab driver, Ryan stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the construction site.
But apparently, he wasn't the only one with the same thought. He had company on that sidewalk.
Mariah.
What was she doing here?
9
Mariah should have known that Ryan would show up here. He might have even told her he was coming here when he was at her apartment last night. Was he the one that had put this in her head?
She didn't need to turn around to see him. She could feel him next to her.
"I keep thinking that there had to be something we could have done that night," she said out loud, surprising herself. Last night she'd made a promise to avoid him and now she was confessing her deepest thoughts. "Something that would have changed this."
"I've wondered that myself but damned if I can come up with anything."
"We could have stayed with him. Maybe...we shouldn't have left that night."
"We left him many nights still partying. He wanted to stay up all night and he was an adult. He didn't want us babysitting him."
She knew that too, but...
"Intellectually, I know that. But emotionally, it's another story."
"I know what you're saying. I still keeping thinking about that night, wondering if I've missed anything or anyone but I come up with nothing new."
There was silence as they both stood there looking at the construction site. Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around the place where they'd found Brad.
"I haven't been back here in years," she finally said. "Not since you and I came here. I don't even know why I'm here now."
They'd come together not long after Brad's disappearance, but they hadn't really known what they were looking for. They hadn't known he was only twenty feet away under a layer of earth and concrete.
"Because it's new again," he said. "You're here because we're all reminded of Brad."
This time she turned to look at him. He looked handsome as always today, dressed casually in khaki pants and a button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up as a concession to the summer heat in Chicago.
"Is that why you're here?"
He shook his head. "I'm here to look at the site where they found him. Take some pictures."
"So this is work?"
"Yes, although I'll admit that I was planning to get a bite to eat but ended up here instead. I guess that's where my mind was at so I'm just going to go with it."
Ryan began to walk toward the crime scene area, but Mariah hesitated. She wasn't sure she was even allowed to go near it. She didn't want to go past the yellow tape. There wouldn't be a bloody scene or anything but it was hard to think of anything but Brad and the past already. If she saw the place where his body was found, she might never sleep at all.
She stayed where she was as he began snapping a few photos with his phone. Then he walked over to the back door of the bar, eyeing it up and down. This time she followed him.
"You said yourself that the door had an alarm on it."
"I'm not looking at the door." He pointed to a small window about two feet from the exit. "I'm looking at that window."
There was a matching one on the opposite side of the door. One was in the men’s’ restroom and one was in the women’s. They were both about six or seven feet off the ground but a grown man wouldn't have any trouble with the distance. But he might with the width and length of the window itself. It wasn't big. She could easily fit through it, but a man?
"I'm not sure that Brad could fit through there," she said, her gaze following his. "He wasn't a big guy but that window is pretty small."
"He was about five-nine and didn't weigh above a buck-fifty. He could fit. That's the type of window that lifts all the way up."
"Okay, I'll play. Let's say that Brad did crawl out of a window that night. Why? Why on earth would he do that? It doesn't make any sense."
Stroking his chin, Ryan didn't take his gaze from the window. "Maybe because someone was waiting for him outside the front door. We don't know everything that he was into."
"You said it yourself, though. It could have been an accident."
Ryan shook his head. "Blunt force trauma to the head. Medical examiner thinks it could have been a pipe from this construction site."
"And you think it's homicide? He could have fallen out of the window and hit his head."
She didn't want to think that someone had killed Brad, although that thought had occurred to her before. Many times. She'd always hoped she was wrong.
"That is a possibility but remember that the indentation in his skull had a specific shape. Unless he fell on a cylindrical object, of course. My gut is telling me that someone hit him in the side of the head."
Shuddering, Mariah's gaze went back to the window. "So you think that Brad climbed out to get away from someone but it didn't work and they hit him in the head with a pipe?"
"It's way too early to be making any sort of theories. At this point, I'm simply gathering possibilities. That's all."
"But your gut has drawn a conclusion?"
He turned to her, his brows raised in question. "Sounds like you don't believe in gut-hunches? My boss caught a serial killer following his gut."
"Wade Bryson." She'd heard the stories as much as everyone else had, the newspaper articles and the news reports on television. It had been big news for weeks. At least until a bigger story came along and knocked it out of the headlines. "And I do believe in listening to my gut. When it talks."
"It will talk more if you listen to it."
"I'll be more attentive. What else is your gut telling you?"
"That I need to eat. I'm starving and I can't concentrate when I'm this hungry. I want to talk to the manager of the bar but they won't be here this early in the morning. I'll have to come back later."
"A good meal can always make the brain work a little better."
He slipped his sunglasses back on. "Then let's go. There's a cafe just down the block."
She knew that, of course. They'd been there before. Together.
"Are you inviting me to eat with you?"
"Yes. I'm planning on apologizing too. So you won't want to miss that."
Considering she'd never heard him apologize to her, she definitely didn't want to miss that. This was an event of monumental proportions. Maybe he had changed, just a little.
"Lead the way."
To her surprise he took her hand, a frisson of electricity running up her arm and straight to her heart. She was so distracted by her inconvenient reaction that she didn't hear or see the speeding car heading straight for them as they were in the crosswalk. It was only when Ryan dragged her to the safety of the sidewalk that she realized what had happened.