Gone Cold by Douglas Corleone

trash.
    I squeezed my bloodied left into a fist and stuffed it into the pocket of my old black leather jacket.
    With my right, I dug into the garbage and fished around for a head, a neck, an arm, something.
    Finally I felt flesh. A forearm. I slid my hand downward, gripped the kid’s wrist and, with a sudden jerk, snapped it.
    As he cried out in pain, I pulled Gilchrist free of the Dumpster and set him down on his feet.
    His eyes widened as he fixed on the fallen figure, who now lay still in a pool of blood beside the pipe.
    Battling my own agony, I shook Gilchrist out of his daze and ushered him quickly toward Ashdown’s crossover. On the way, he glanced at the SUV’s driver, who remained on the ground with his hands on his head. He also stole a glimpse of the kid with bad skin, but his gaze kept returning to the dead man.
    I shoved him forward.
    Zoey opened the rear door of the crossover and I tossed Gilchrist onto the backseat and climbed in after him.
    Ashdown tucked his Glock into his jacket and jumped back into the driver’s seat. The sirens were closing in, fast. Ashdown threw the transmission into drive and finally slammed on the accelerator.
    We peeled away just as the sirens and flashing blue lights rounded the corner.

 
    Chapter 16
    TWELVE YEARS AGO
    I hurry down the stairs with photo albums and shoe boxes of videocassettes under my arms. I dump everything onto the dining room table and immediately begin flipping through the photo albums, searching for the most recent pictures of Hailey.
    “Do you have any that were taken this year?” West asks.
    I nod my head as I tear through the pages, certain now of what I’m looking for but completely unsure where to find them. “We took a vacation to Disney World just a few months ago. We still use a thirty-five-millimeter camera. We went through a half-dozen rolls of film.”
    “Those will do great,” West assures me.
    I twist my neck and peer into the living room where Tasha is on the couch holding her head between her legs. “I could use my wife’s help,” I say.
    West says, “Let’s leave her be for now. I’ll help you find what we’re looking for.”
    I close one album and move on to the next, muttering, “Tasha fills these albums. She knows where everything is.”
    “It’s all right.” West lifts the lid off one of the shoe boxes. “What are these?”
    “Home videos,” I tell her. “Your partner said we should turn some over to the media.”
    “Any recent ones?”
    It takes me a moment. “Her sixth birthday party.”
    “Perfect.”
    I finally land on the photos taken during our most recent trip to Orlando. “Here they are,” I say, pulling the pictures free of their sleeves one at a time. “Hailey in our hotel room at the Polynesian. Hailey in front of the ball at Epcot Center. Hailey with Donald Duck.” A strange giggle emanates from my throat. “Donald’s her favorite character for some reason. Tasha and I never understood it. To us he’s just a bare-assed duck who always seems to be pissed off.”
    West chooses the best representations of Hailey and hands them to a uniformed officer along with instructions.
    Meanwhile, I sort through the videocassettes. Most are labeled but in Tasha’s atrocious handwriting. I crane my neck to see if she’s recovered, but she hasn’t moved an inch.
    “This one,” I say, plucking a cassette marked HAILEY’S 6 TH B-DAY out of the shoe box .
    “When did this party take place?”
    “Just a few weeks ago.”
    “Where?”
    “Right here. In the backyard. We hit on a nice sunny day in April.”
    “Do you happen to have a guest list?”
    “A guest list?”
    “A list of the people who came. It’ll help us eliminate some sets of fingerprints, especially on the gate.”
    I hustle into the kitchen and grab a pen and a piece of paper then return to the dining room table. As I jot down the names of the people who were here, my hand trembles and I can barely recognize my own handwriting.
    One of