by Chris Culver
“What do you want to know?”
I held out my hands and raised my eyebrows. “Why do the people who own this house have us? Are we maids, or are we guests?”
Emily smirked. “Depends on how much Christopher and Diana like you.”
“They’ll like me,” I said, tilting my head to the side. “I’m lovable.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I’m not sure fooling you is the difficult task you think it is,” I said. Before she said anything, I got up and walked to the breakfast table. There was no dust anywhere. “Christopher said something about rules.”
“Yeah, go to school. Curfew is midnight. If you’re out later than that, Diana locks the door, and you sleep in the garage. Dinner is at seven. You clean up after yourself, and you do your own laundry. Diana likes a clean house. Quiet hours are eight at night to eight in the morning. During quiet hours, you study or you sleep.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Any other rules?”
“Stay out of my way. I’ve got another year here, and then I’m getting out. I don’t want you screwing anything up.”
I nodded to myself and looked around the breakfast room, evaluating the place. This would work out just fine. It seemed as if I had hit the foster kid lottery.
Of course, little in my life was ever as it seemed.
10
My hands trembled as I holstered my weapon. My legs felt weak, and my stomach roiled. I needed to get out of that basement before I vomited, so I ran upstairs and then to the front porch where I sucked in deep breaths of warm spring air. Years had passed since I last saw Emily, and we had never been friends, but seeing her there with those burns all over her body…it was just wrong.
A cold chill ran down my back, and I sat down on the brick steps of the front stoop. A pickup truck drove by on the road. Its exhaust hit me a second after it passed, seeming to cleanse the odor of blood and burned hair from my nose. I took a few more deep breaths, feeling my heart slow. My hands still shook, so I balled my fingers into fists and squeezed them tight enough that my knuckles turned white.
When I closed my eyes, I saw Emily’s dead body. Megan’s body had bothered me, but the gunshot would have killed her before she even felt it. She died without pain or fear. Someone had tied Emily to a chair and hurt her, though. Her murderer took his time.
I had seen bodies before but never one like this. Emily wasn’t just killed; they had tortured her.
I forced my hands to relax. As the initial shock wore off, I pulled out my phone and called 911. The dispatcher answered before the first ring finished.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“This is Detective Joe Court of the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. I’m in St. Louis on Mississippi Avenue overlooking Lafayette Park. I’d like to report a homicide.”
My voice didn’t feel like my own, so I cleared my throat hard. The dispatcher typed something for a moment.
“Okay, Detective. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I found a dead woman in the basement of a house on Mississippi Avenue,” I said. The more I spoke, the more I felt like myself. I forced myself to picture the scene in my head and think through it. “The blood on the ground has dried, and there are signs of a struggle inside the home. The front door was open on my arrival. Believing someone inside might have been in trouble, I cleared the house. I found the victim in the basement tied to a chair.”
The dispatcher paused. “So she’s dead?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I need help here. Please inform the first responders that the woman sitting on the front steps is an armed police officer.”
The dispatcher typed for another moment. “All right. I have officers en route. They’ll arrive within five minutes.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up and rubbed my eyes, hoping I could stop seeing my foster sister’s broken body. Somehow, I didn’t think that would happen soon.
By the time the first police cruiser arrived, I felt a little better. I introduced myself and told them what I had found. One officer then went inside while the second stayed out with me and asked me questions to verify my identity. It was standard procedure. I forced myself to stay as detached as I could.
When the first officer left the house a few minutes later, his skin looked almost green. He bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and drew in great big breaths. He nodded to his partner.
“She’s telling the truth,” he said between breaths. “We need a supervisor and an ambulance. This is ugly.”
The St. Louis police could handle a homicide, so I stayed in the back of the first responders’ cruiser while they worked. Since I had a moment, I called Harry, my partner.
“Harry, it’s Joe. Where are you?”
“Searching Kiera Williams’s room at the Wayfair Motel. We’ve got a lot of prints and a lot of body fluids. I’ll be honest; it’s kind of disgusting here.”
“Sorry it offends your delicate nature. Get a pen and paper because I’ve got multiple things to tell you. First, your victim is not Kiera Williams. Best I can tell, Kiera Williams doesn’t exist. The address on her license is a postal shop in Rock Hill, Missouri. Second, I think she’s a young woman named Megan Young. Travis already knows my theory, but he’s not on board with it yet. Third, I looked up Emily Young in St. Louis. She’s Megan’s older sister. She’s also dead. By all appearances, someone tortured her. It’s bad.”
Harry whistled. “This just got interesting. Any idea why these two sisters are living under fake names, or why someone would want them dead?”
“I haven’t talked to her in years, but Emily used to deal weed. According to the government, Christopher Hughes murdered Megan twelve years ago. Hughes is in prison. If you want details on that, talk to the boss. He worked Megan Young’s case when he was still a detective in St. Louis.”
Harry paused for a few moments.
“So our records say Megan died twelve years ago. Your victim, her sister, was a drug dealer. This sounds like a terrible soap opera.”
“I’m sorry it doesn’t live up to your expectations of what a homicide should look like.”
“Me, too,” said Harry. “Are you still in St. Louis?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning and looking over my shoulder while an unmarked police cruiser parked behind me. A man and a woman sat inside. I nodded to them although they didn’t seem to see me. “I’ll talk to you when I get back, but I think I’ll be here for a while. Keep working the case, and call Travis to let him know what’s going on. And make sure Dr. Sheridan IDs Megan as soon as possible.”
He grunted. “I’m on it. Good luck, and I’ll keep you updated.”
I thanked him, hung up, and tried opening my door. Nothing happened, which shouldn’t have surprised me in the rear seat of a police cruiser. I had to knock on the glass for a uniformed officer’s attention before I could get out. He smiled.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I should have warned you to sit in the front.”
“It’s my fault,” I said, looking to the unmarked cruiser. “Are they homicide detectives?”
“Yeah. That’s Jeff Driscoll on the left and Amy Ledgerman on the right.”
“Thanks,” I said, already walking toward the cruiser. The male detective, Driscoll, stepped out first, while his partner, Ledgerman, made a phone call. I shook his hand. “Joe Court, St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. Nice to meet you.”
“Jeff Driscoll. My partner’s Amy Ledgerman. My dispatcher says you found the body.”
I nodded and looked toward the house. Most days, I would have waited until his partner was with us to go through everything, but Detective Driscoll had questions, and I had answers. I took him through my entire day from the moment I got the call about the body in St. Augustine to the moment I found Emily’s corpse in St. Louis. I also went through my suspicions that the body in St. Augustine belonged to a woman who records said died in St. Louis County twelve years ago. He took notes throughout an
d asked clarifying questions where appropriate. His partner joined us about halfway through.
“Take me back to your victim in St. Augustine,” said Ledgerman. “How sure are you that she’s Megan Young?”
“It’s been twelve years since I’ve seen her, but she has the same facial features, and she’s the right age,” I said. “I requested that our coroner examine her teeth and compare them to Megan Young’s dental records.”
Detective Ledgerman wrote that down but then glanced at her partner.
“We need to call somebody from the county. Should we bring in the prosecutors on this, too?”
Driscoll nodded. “Not a bad idea if Detective Court is right. We’ll need a supervisor here, too, to deal with the media.”
“If you plan to call a county detective, ask for Julia Green,” I said. “She knows the victim.”
Driscoll nodded, but Ledgerman furrowed her brow. “I know Captain Green. She works sex crimes, not homicide.”
“Yeah, but she worked part of the Megan Young case twelve years ago.” I paused and then cleared my throat. “And she’s sort of my mom. She’ll be mad if I don’t call her.”
Driscoll smiled, while his partner snickered.
“We’ll let you make that call,” he said.
I nodded, and the two detectives went inside to check out the scene. While they worked, I leaned against the trunk of the nearest police cruiser and called Julia’s cell phone. Her phone went to voicemail before it even rang.
“Captain Green…Julia, it’s Joe. Sorry I haven’t called for a while, but I’ve been a little busy. I’m at a murder scene near Lafayette Park in the city. You should come. The victim is Emily Young. Somebody tortured her,” I said. I paused for a moment and sighed, unsure how to approach this conversation. Blunt was best. “I think Megan Young is dead in St. Augustine. You know what that means. So get down here. It’s on Mississippi. It’s the house with all the police cars out front. You can’t miss it. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
I hung up and waited a few minutes for her to call back. She didn’t, which meant she was probably in a meeting. As a member of her department’s command staff, she had a lot of those. Or maybe she didn’t want to hear from me.
I loved Julia, but it had been a while since she and I had last spoken. Our last conversation hadn’t been a fight, but she did question every life decision I had made in the past decade. The conversation shouldn’t have bothered me. Julia only wanted what was best for me, but even a decade after she had adopted me, I hadn’t gotten used to having someone who cared about me in my life.
I waited for about half an hour and watched while the police officers worked the crime scene. Then, I heard a familiar voice to my right. My adoptive mother and I looked almost nothing alike. Where I was five seven and blonde, she was just a little over five feet tall and brunette. She was slight of build with high cheekbones and bright green eyes. She laughed and smiled more often in a day than I did in a year, and it showed in the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. Looking at her, I realized how much I had missed her.
“Hey, Joe,” she said. “It’s been a while.”
“Hey, Jules,” I said. “Sorry I haven’t called earlier. I’ve been busy.”
“That’s okay,” she said, looking toward the crime scene. “We’ll get coffee later. For now, let’s talk shop. What have you got?”
I led her through everything I had seen and done so far, and she nodded just as Detectives Driscoll and Ledgerman had.
“Any confirmation on your St. Augustine victim’s identity?”
“Not yet, but my partner’s working on that.”
“Well, damn,” said Julia. “We tried Christopher Hughes in St. Louis County, so he’ll be our problem. You’ll focus on Megan and Emily. Even after everything he’s done, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to keep him in prison.”
“I know,” I said. Julia put a hand on my elbow and squeezed.
“You’re strong,” she said, her voice low. “Your father and I will be here for you.”
“I know.”
We stayed still for a few minutes. Detective Ledgerman must have seen us because she came out of the house. She shook Julia’s hand and then looked at me.
“Did you see the pictures upstairs in the hallway?”
I shook my head. “I cleared the house and secured the scene, but I didn’t look at the decorations.”
“You should now,” said Ledgerman. “Since you knew the victim, I want to see whether you can ID anybody.”
I agreed, so Julia and I walked into the house and up the stairs to the second floor. As Detective Ledgerman had said, there were about a dozen pictures on the wall in the hallway, including a very old one of Emily. She wore her hair in pigtails and had pink lipstick on her lips. It looked like a school picture from fifth or sixth grade.
Ledgerman directed my attention to a much more recent picture taken from what looked like Times Square in New York. It was night, and hundreds of people milled about in the background. Front and center, though, were two young women, and they both wore heavy coats and purple sunglasses with 2016 drawn on the lenses. It was New Year’s Eve, and they were out on the town.
“The girl on the left is in the basement,” said Ledgerman. “You recognize the girl on the right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s Megan Young. She’s our victim in St. Augustine.”
Detective Ledgerman looked to Julia.
“Now sounds like a good time to call the lawyers, Captain.”
Julia nodded and pulled out her phone. I looked at the other photos and swore aloud. Detective Ledgerman looked at me.
“Yeah?”
I pointed to one picture. Megan and Emily stood on either side of a minister outside a church.
“We have two dead siblings,” I said. “What do you think the chances are we’ve got a third?”
Ledgerman looked at the picture I pointed to.
“They’ve got a brother?” she asked.
“Half brother. I haven’t seen him in a long time, but I think his name was Cameron. Looks like he became a minister.”
Ledgerman looked closer at the picture and then tapped something into her cell phone.
“That’s New Pilgrim Baptist,” she said. “It’s on the north side of town.”
I nodded and hurried toward the stairs. “It’s your town, so you’re driving. Let’s go.”
11
I considered following Detective Ledgerman in my car, but I didn’t know the city well and didn’t want to get lost. So I climbed into her cruiser, and we headed out. Where Emily Young lived in a gentrified, stable neighborhood full of young professionals, her brother worked in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in town.
His church had a red brick exterior with an exposed limestone foundation. Plexiglass panels and thick bars protected hundred-year-old stained-glass windows in the sanctuary hall while the church’s exterior grounds sprawled across two city blocks. It had a basketball court, a tennis court, and even a small playground—all of which looked well used.
This church served its community well. Cameron ought to have been proud of that.
Detective Ledgerman parked on the street near a two-story brick home with elaborate dentil molding on the roofline. Had someone restored it, it would have fit into Emily Young’s neighborhood well. Here, the entire west side had crumbled, leaving the building open to the elements.
It wasn’t the only derelict building on the street, either. Across from it sat a three-story home in similar disrepair, and there was an overgrown, vacant lot beside it. Even here, though, there were a few homes that looked better than others. They had neat front lawns and flowers in window boxes. Cars parked up and down the street.
“I’m surprised there are so many vacant lots,” I said, walking around Ledgerman’s cruiser to join her on the sidewalk. She tilted her head to the side and shrugged.
“Didn’t used to be this many,” she said. “The city owns a lot of this property, and
the mayor’s office would rather have a vacant lot than a crumbling house that could hurt a kid who goes exploring. Hurricane Katrina hurt, too.”
I smiled. “I didn’t realize the hurricane reached this far north.”
She glanced at me and walked across the street to the church. “St. Louis brick built New Orleans a hundred and fifty years ago. When Katrina hit, it damaged a lot of brick buildings. Contractors needed old St. Louis brick, and the best place to get that was in St. Louis. They drove into neighborhoods like this with semis and offered a hundred bucks per ton of bricks—no questions asked. People all over the city came in with sledgehammers and tore this place apart.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
She shrugged. “Especially for the people who lived here.”
We reached the other side of the street. Some boys up the street saw us and scattered, leaving a bright orange couch and a washing machine on the sidewalk. Ledgerman nodded in their direction.
“You think they’re helping their grandmother move?”
I stopped and looked for a moment. “Why would anyone steal a couch and an old washing machine?”
Detective Ledgerman stopped in front of me and shrugged again. “Probably found the washing machine and thought they could sell it for scrap metal. The couch, well…maybe they wanted somewhere to sit.”
The boys looked as if they were twelve or thirteen years old. Had I seen them dragging a washing machine down the street in St. Augustine, I would have stopped them and taken them home to their parents—or to school. Ledgerman didn’t seem too concerned about them, though. We had other worries than truancy.
Someone had locked the church’s side doors, so we walked around to the front, where we found an elderly woman pushing a small cart laden with canned goods out a door. I held the door for her, and we slipped inside. The church’s interior smelled like dust, coffee, and old paper. It reminded me of a library. Tile the color of faded red brick covered the floor while fluorescent lights buzzed on the ceiling.
Neither of us knew the church’s layout, so we followed the sound of voices to a large storage room in the basement. Crude wooden shelves made from plywood and two-by-fours filled the space like aisles in a grocery store. Refrigerators and freezers lined the back wall. Volunteers had stacked boxes of canned goods on every inch of open floor space. Three elderly shoppers walked the aisles and occasionally put cans of creamed corn or green beans in their trolleys.