Lavender Trails

An alarm chimed in Greyson Locane’s suite. The sound meant he could stop pretending to sleep. He swung his legs to the side of his bed and slid them into the slippers waiting for him. The digital hotel alarm clock illuminated the time in red numbers. 4 am.

Greyson got up and made his bed, smoothing out the starchy sheets with his palms before heading to the bathroom. He climbed into his typical ice-cold shower, leaving his robe lying limply on the floor. He took several deep breaths with his muscles rigid until he could stand under the icy downpour.

After his shower, Greyson entered the kitchen, where he poured a black cup of coffee and lit a Newport. The minty smoke made his mouth tingle as he slid open the back door and stepped outside onto the balcony to listen to the city noises.

The wind ran through his damp brown hair and made him shiver. He took a lithium pill with his coffee, a habit he had started after reading a Times article that correlated higher lithium levels in drinking water to happiness.

He dug out his phone and navigated to his voicemails. The glow of his cigarette was the only light on the balcony. When he exhaled, he couldn't tell what was smoke and what was his breath against the morning sky.

"Hey baby, it's me...listen, call me back. It's important. I love you, bye."

He took another long drag of his cigarette and stepped closer to the edge of the balcony, looking down through the mist at the ants on the sidewalk. Then he got his phone back out and replayed the message again. On his third time listening, he was interrupted by a text.

"I'm here."

Greyson put his phone away and went downstairs to meet his partner. A white take-a-away lunch-style bag was sitting between them in the car.

"Breakfast burritos." Walker said, smiling, "I worry about you always eating hotel food."

Locane lit another cigarette and cracked his window. "Thanks, but I'm not hungry." His friend was alraedy unfolding the tin foil around his burrito, wielding it in one hand and driving with the other.

"I'm just saying. You're withering away on me. Remember how you used to look in high scho-“ He interrupted himself. “Uh, I really wish you wouldn't smoke in here." A piece of egg flew from his mouth on the last word and landed on Locane’s shiny black dress shoe.

"What do we got?" Locane said, talking through the side of his mouth while exhaling a cloud of smoke into the black Lincoln.

"Early morning mountain biker found a body off an Olympic Rainforest trail, deep in the woods. It seems like it was there for a while. It's pretty decomposed." Walker said between bites of his burrito.

Detective Locane nodded and leaned against the seat to look out the window. The two men continued in silence as the city melted into lines of dark green trees, the tops covered by the thick coat of fog that had collected on the road, preventing them from seeing more than 5 feet ahead.

When they arrived at the park entrance, a forensic tech met them in a small golf cart to take them the rest of the way. An eerie feeling existed between the trio as the cart creaked up the steep mountain terrain. Detective Locane caught a pair of glowing eyes peering at them through the dense trees as they whizzed by.

The golf cart eventually pulled off the tiny bike path, and the three men trampled through thick mossy grass down to a nearby ravine where the rest of the forensic team was waiting. The chief medical examiner approached them first.

“Hey, Hughes, fill us in.” Detective Locane called as she made her way delicately through the mud in 6-inch heels.

"A Jane Doe, our good samaritan, found the skull, and since searching the area, we've found a few other bones: no belongings, no phone, no identity. The skull is in good shape. We'll test the teeth and see what comes up." Chief Hughs explained.

"Can I see the skull?"

“Sure. You might have to check with my team. We're loading all the evidence into the van now. We're about done here.”

Detective Locane climbed out of the ravine back to the road where a forensic tech was loading boxes into a small van to bring back to the lab. "Can I see your pictures of the scene?" The tech nodded and handed him a black camera bag before scurrying to grab another box. He leaned against the van, flipping through the photos collected.

A photo of what looked to be a Tibia bone shaved clean from forest creatures: an unrecognized bone fragment. He clicked to the next image, a picture of the front of the skull, the teeth curved into a sinister-looking smile. He paused and brought the camera closer to this face, examining the structure. His eyes scanned over the shape of the crown, along the chin and jawline, and finally, the teeth. He looked at each one, and when he reached the front two, he stopped and stared at the tiny chip in the right front tooth. He ran his fingertips over the image, suspended in thought until he suddenly had a realization.

He recognized this smile.

He dropped the camera and his legs turned to jelly, he fell to the forest floor, hurling up bile and coffee. Acid stung his throat from the lithium pill. His head spun, and sharp memories intruded his mind. Voices called his name from what sounded like the end of a hallway. All he could see or feel was her, with that smile, standing in front of him. She was warm and alive, vibrant with color. His body lurched again, but nothing came up. Walker clutched his shoulders and shook him violently, "Locane! What is it?"

Only one phrase came out, over and over while he sobbed in his partner's arms. “I'm sorry- Casey I'm so sorry.”

Detective Locane found himself on Peach Tree Avenue for the first time in 10 years. He parked where he had when he was 16, four houses away from his destination. He knew Casey’s parents weren’t home, he’d watched them leave twenty minutes ago from behind binoculars. He strolled around the white two-story house to their back garden, lifting the fifth brick from the fence up to find their spare key.

Opening the door to her room felt like entering a time capsule. He sat on her bed and inhaled the lavender scent from her pillowcase. Her parents had left her room untouched-just in case she came back and wondered where something was. He clutched it desperately against his chest as he pulled out his phone.

“Help me, Casey.” He whispered, looking at a photo of the two of them at prom above her bed. He looked dorky and pale, but he was beaming, so proud to be standing next to her.

“You’re supposed to be helping me.” Echoed from the phone as he played the voicemail. Greyson’s breath hitched.

“There’s so much I never got the chance to explain.”

The voice continued before fading off into a crackling, and then silence. He pressed to repeat the message.

"Hey baby, it's me...listen, call me back. It's important. I love you, bye."

He slammed his fist against the wall causing a calendar to fall off and lay open on her bed. He crawled over to it and flipped back through the few months before she disappeared. His birthday was marked with little hearts, she had dinner plans the Friday after she went missing. She had a doctor's appointment scheduled, it was marked “follow up,” with a little drawing of a bottle placed next to it.

“A baby?” Greyson exhaled as he stared at the penciled-in appointment. As the realization set in he heard the key turn in the front door downstairs. He glanced back at her door, sprinting over to shut it before scaling down the side of the family home, as his feet hit the garden soil he looked up at Casey’s window. There she was, smiling back at him mischievously. He could see her bring her hand to her mouth to blow him a kiss and draw him a heart in the window.

“Billie take out the trash will you?”

So she did, heaving the overfilled bag over her little head into the trash can. The smell of cigarettes invaded her nostrils and she turned angrily to find out the source. The scent pointed her to a man sitting on the curb across the street. She could tell he was crying by the way his back arched, hunched forward and shaking as he sobbed under the lonesome ghostly street light.

Detective Locane branded his badge to the receptionist of Dr. Roman’s office. The receptionist, who had previously refused to get Casey’s records for him, finally relented and slid a folder across the plastic divider. He grabbed the folder and pinned it underneath his armpit, his badge hanging from his mouth as he ran back to his mobile office in the parking lot.

Blood work, vaccines, documentation on aftercare for tonsil removal surgery. In the back, stapled to a positive pregnancy test, he found an expectant mother pamphlet. Detective Locane leaned his head back against his seat. Why wouldn’t she tell him about the baby? He bit on his knuckle while he looked over the paperwork. Denise Swanson was listed as Casey’s emergency contact. He remembered her from when Casey lived in the dorm.

While he thumbed through the records he dialed Walker's number.

“Hello.”

“Hey, I need an address, do you remember Denise? Swanson?”

“We’re not supposed to be working this case, Locane.”

“Why are you being like that? It’s Casey. “

“I just don’t think it’s good for you.”

“I’ll worry about what’s good for me. Can you get the address?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank-”

the line was already dead.

Denise Swanson lived in a sunshine-yellow house at the end of an otherwise drab street. It was cloudy when Detective Locane's tires smothered the daisies she planted at the base of the driveway. He did his best to smooth the grease from his hair as he buttoned his jacket and knocked on her light blue door, his knuckles rapped against the white fluffy clouds that accented it.

“Denise! I’m not sure if you remember me, I’m a friend of Casey’s.” He called through the door. He brought his fist up to knock again when he caught a glimpse of the living room in disarray through the silver of a window carved into the door.

“Denise?” He called again, stepping off the porch to walk around the side of the house, he peeked through a window and saw the frame of a woman lying on the floor.

“Fuck.”

“I need backup to Denise Swasons’s residence, 225 NW 5th Street. I’m breaching the property now.”

The detective called into his phone as he rounded the corner to the front door. With his weapon drawn he kicked it open to reveal Denise lying lifeless near an upturned coffee table. He used his foot to nudge her side as he looked around the room.

“Denise, can you hear me?”

No response.

He crept further down the hall and marched into an open room.

“Police! If there’s someone here, announce yourself and show me your hands.” He called into the thick silence.

After securing that room he moved to the next, repeating that if someone was there, they needed to reveal themselves. At the end of the hall was a bathroom with a rainbow painted on the door. With a cautious hand, he turned the knob and the door creaked open.

He saw the shiny black pistol first. Red light drowned his eyes as the shooter drew a bead on his forehead.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave this one alone,” Walker said as he clicked the trigger back on his gun. The only times he had drawn his weapon previously was in defense of the man now in front of the barrel.

“You know, you weren’t the only one who lost her. I lost her too, I loved her too. I had to listen to you play that stupid voicemail over and over. Always asked me what I thought she wanted to talk about. You left her Locane. You went off to school 4 hours away and I was all she had. We were in love. She just didn’t know how to tell you. And then, just when we had something good, the baby came. She had to tell you then. She insisted!”

Sirens approached in the distance causing Walker to slam the pistol against his skull. He had tears welling up in his eyes when he locked the gun back on Detective Locane.

“A little girl, I bet she would have looked just like her. But your family was paying my way through school. You had what she needed, and I was just there when there was no one else. I’m sorry Locane, I’m not letting anyone take everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

Detective Locane was still trying to process the betrayal of his best friend and lover when the bullet pierced his lung, sending him flying back against the wall. He clutched his abdomen as Walker sprinted past him towards the living room where a second shot went off.

Locane’s ears rang as he watched Walker clutch his leg and slump to the floor, Denise following her shot up with a blow to the head with her gun. Locane laughed, the sound came out gurgled from the blood in his lungs. He dug for his phone as officers stormed into the house. The pain was starting to subside in his core as he pressed play. He lit a Newport and leaned back against the wall, the phone tucked into the nape of his neck.

“Hey baby, It’s me-”