Most days, Craig hid behind the idea that he could at least catch the criminals and put them away. Meeting with Lisa Harrington had been the first time in his career he’d had to face a victim on the other side, dealing with the possible release of her daughter’s killer.
As he watched her walk away, shoulders hunched, gaze down, he realized he was kidding himself. He didn’t help heal wounds; he just put a Band-Aid on them while they festered.
CHAPTER TWO
No course, no seminar, no self-help book filled with wise words and the best of intentions…Nothing prepared you to tell a parent their child was dead. No parent should outlive their child. It’s not the way things were meant to be, not as nature intended. Children were supposed to be the legacy. You could comfort yourself, knowing when you passed on you left a bit of yourself behind, knowing you wouldn’t immediately be forgotten.Losing a child just wasn’t right.
Tain had heard it all. He understood it. Every time he prepared to speak with a parent it was right there, churning beneath the surface. Let the memories come and all the anguish would be back, fresh, threatening to overtake him, to push him over the edge into a bottomless pit of despair.
The grief was enough to make you feel as though your soul was being put through a shredder.
There were few things worse than telling a parent their child was dead. Tain didn’t just know that. He knew it. It wasn’t textbook head knowledge or practical knowledge from the experience of watching the fallout. For him, it went far deeper.
Mrs. Reimer, we regret to inform you your son is dead. Your four-year-old boy, the one with the dark curly hair and big brown eyes. They hit him on the torso and back of the head but didn’t mark his face. We all saw it, standing there, looking down at where he’d curled into a little ball, in the fetal position. He was still warm, the tiniest bit of pink in his cheeks. Put a blanket over him and it would have looked as though he was just sleeping, as though he’d just worn himself out playing and had curled up on the slip of pavement at the park to take a nap.
Just don’t look at the back of his head or the dark stain on the pavement and you could hold on to the idea that he would get up soon and run off to play. You could pretend someone hadn’t used him as a human piñata.
They couldn’t tell her all of that. And this time, telling a mother her son was dead might just be the easier part of their task. Mrs. Reimer would likely think her world was falling apart, that she had already heard the most unbearable news imaginable.
Under different circumstances that would be correct. A parent’s worst nightmare, until they managed to tell Jeffrey’s parents the rest.
That their daughter was a suspect in the murder. And that she was missing.
Tain looked up as his partner, Constable Ashlyn Hart, appeared in the door to the ladies’ washroom. She paused, lifted her hand to her forehead and stood still for a moment. No smile to light her face. Under the circumstances Tain wouldn’t have expected one, but there was something else in her expression…Hollow cheeks, pallid skin. He watched her rub her temple, her gaze fixed on some spot on the grass.
They had worked on tough cases together before. This wasn’t the first time they’d found themselves standing over the body of a child, but this time he’d seen the tears well up in her eyes for that split second. Then she’d swallowed it down, gotten on with the job, not even the hint of a tremor in her voice as she assumed control of the scene. That’s what he’d come to expect from Ashlyn. She felt it as deeply as anyone, but she was a professional.
Every now and again she had her moments, though, like anyone else. He didn’t blame her. If anything, he commended her for taking it off the field, making it a private moment instead of a public display. Now a raw look in her features hinted at a deeper pain.
And then it was gone.
He trawled through his memories of the past few weeks but couldn’t think of any indication that there were problems. Had he been so preoccupied with—