Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"She could suggest he was murdered with a secret lover. It's a ridiculous stretch, but..." He shrugged.

"Typical for Seanna."

"Yes." No hint of anxiety or discomfort touched his eyes, as if that coffee contained a generous shot of Irish whiskey. He took my cup and rose to make another, saying, "Keep looking."

"Yes, boss."

I searched while he fixed me a second coffee and added chocolate chip cookies.

"Little early for sweets, isn't it?" I said.

"Carpe diem."

I had to sputter a laugh. For Gabriel, eating cookies for breakfast was indeed seizing the day.

"So, Greg Kirkman," I said. "Thirty-two years old when he disappeared. Never married. Last seen in Chicago. He went out drinking with friends, got in his car, and disappeared."

"Did his route cross any bridges or inconveniently located steep embankments?"

In other words, after that night of drinking and then getting behind the wheel, had the police thought to check anyplace where Kirkman's car might have plunged off the road?

"Actually, that is a possibility," I said. "Kirkman lived outside the city. He was a construction worker and had built his own house in the forest." I ran searches as I spoke. "Which was apparently about five miles from here."

That had Gabriel's coffee cup lowering, his eyes focusing. "Any connection to Cainsville?"

After a few minutes of searching, I shook my head. "Nothing's jumping out. It seems he'd built the place only a few years before he vanished, and he hadn't made any local ties. Only one of the regional papers even mentioned his disappearance."

"City business."

I nodded. Even growing up in the suburbs, there'd been some of that mindset. What happened in the city stayed in the city--that foreign and vaguely sinister place best suited for quick visits to take advantage of the superior shopping and dining. Even after a few years in this region, Kirkman would still have been considered a Chicagoan.

I kept searching, both casting my net wider and zooming in on specifics.

"Lived alone, never married, no local connections," I said. "No known girlfriend or boyfriend. Something of a loner, but sociable enough if he was drinking with friends." More keystrokes. "Or maybe not. Got a longer article here. I missed it because they misspelled his name as Kirkson."

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"Yes, not exactly fine journalism. It's the archive of a local crime magazine. I use the term loosely. It was one of those mimeographed newsletters mailed out to a couple hundred subscribers. The guy writing it might not have been professional enough to fact-check names, but he fancied himself an investigative reporter and seems to have done some serious digging on this case. He interviewed the guys Kirkman had been drinking with. They were coworkers from a construction job, and they said Kirkman didn't usually join them, but he had that night."

"Hmm."

"Yep, anytime someone acts out of character--and that action leads to trouble--it could be significant. Which may only mean that it's significant in the sense he decided to be more sociable and paid for it with his life, because he wasn't accustomed to driving after a few drinks."

"True."

"It's also possible that this amateur sleuth, in his zeal to tell a good story for his subscribers, made shit up."

"Also true."

"The guy wrote a couple more articles on Kirkman's disappearance. I'll need to double-check them against more reliable..." When I trailed off, gaze still fixed on my screen, Gabriel walked behind me to read over my shoulder.

"Hmm," he said.

"Exactly."

It was a quote from Kirkman's neighbor, who said she'd seen a police car in Kirkman's drive twice in the weeks before his disappearance. When the intrepid reporter contacted the state police, they refused to comment, saying it was part of an ongoing investigation.

"And of course it's Saturday," I said. "Which means contacting our police sources will cost extra."