by Chris Culver
He walked away, but I cleared my throat before he got far.
“Hey, Delgado,” I called. “Since you’re working the Megan Young case, what am I supposed to be doing?”
“Speed trap, sweetheart. Like I said, enjoy your day.”
As soon as he left, I swore under my breath. The speed trap was a punishment. About a quarter mile from town, the speed limit on the highway dropped from fifty-five to thirty-five miles an hour. About half the people who drove by slowed down, but the other half blew past the sign at sixty or seventy miles an hour. I wouldn’t have minded ticketing those guys but for one simple fact: Two years ago, some asshole from the County Council planted a big bush in front of the sign. You could hardly even see it anymore.
The speed trap wasn’t about protecting pedestrians or other drivers. It was about revenue. Each ticket averaged two hundred and thirty-eight dollars, about half of which went to St. Augustine County. On a good day, someone working the speed trap might write ten or fifteen tickets. With the fair going on, I’d write that many in an hour. I’d also piss off half the drivers in the state. Bitching about it wouldn’t help anything, though.
I changed into a uniform in the women’s locker room, signed out a squad car, and drove out for my shift. Over the next eight hours, people cursed at me in at least four languages, two different men asked me out, three nuns scolded me on their way to the art fair, and at least two dozen men and women gave me the finger as they drove past. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend my day.
By the time I finished my shift and drove back to my station, I wanted nothing more than to walk my dog, grab a drink, and take a long, hot bath. Instead, I sat at my desk and called Harry, my partner in the murder investigation of Megan Young. His cell rang a few times before he picked up.
“Harry, it’s Joe. How you doing?”
“Hey, kid. I’m tired. I’m working a murder, and my partner got kicked off the case because she can’t keep her temper under control.”
If any of my other colleagues had called me kid or chastised me for losing my temper, they would have pissed me off. Harry had earned that right, though. He had almost forty years on the job and could retire with a full pension, but he stayed on because he liked the work. Not only that, he solved a lot of tough cases. I had learned more in my first week working with him than I had in two years of supervised training when I first joined the department.
“To be clear, I didn’t lose my temper. Travis removed me from the case because a detective in St. Louis thought I had a conflict of interest. I don’t. You guys made any progress?”
“Sort of,” said Harry. “Delgado and Martin spent the entire day at the Pizza Palace. I’ve been interviewing the staff from Club Serenity again to see whether they saw anything.”
I smiled to myself. “And by interviewing Club Serenity’s staff, you mean you’ve been talking to strippers all day.”
“It’s a sacrifice I make for justice,” said Harry.
“You find anything?” I asked, my smile waning.
“Not a damn thing. The girls were busy dancing or watching the fireworks when the victim died, and the bouncers and manager were busy watching the crowd to make sure nobody got too handsy with the girls without paying.”
“I assume Delgado and Martin fared well at the Pizza Palace.”
Harry laughed under his breath. “They haven’t got shit, and they’re both pissed. By the end of the day, they had yelled at the owner so much that he offered to pay the legal bills of his employees if they wanted a lawyer.”
It shouldn’t have, but hearing that made me happy.
“Did Dr. Sheridan finish his autopsy?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t find a lot. Somebody shot the victim with a .300 Winchester Magnum round. She died instantly. Beyond that, he doesn’t have much.”
“Did he check her teeth?”
Harry paused and then drew in a slow breath. “Detective Delgado cancelled your request to check the victim’s teeth against Megan Young’s dental records. He didn’t think it was necessary.”
I sat straighter and shook my head. “He may not agree with me, but that’s just stupid. He took prints, right?”
“No matches in the system,” said Harry. “Your victim was never arrested, she never joined the Army, and she never registered her prints with any government agency as far as we can tell.”
Which didn’t surprise me if she were Megan Young. Few drug dealers would have given up their prints to the government if they could help it. The foster care system might have had her prints, but the courts routinely sealed those files when kids turned eighteen. We wouldn’t get access to those without a court order.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “The victim is Megan Young. Delgado isn’t going to find her killer by harassing pizza delivery drivers.”
“It is what it is,” said Harry. “For what it’s worth, the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office agrees with you. They want Sheridan to give them access to the body so they can confirm her ID themselves.”
“But Delgado’s still sticking to his theory that she’s Kiera Williams.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Harry. “God blessed Detective Delgado with a mind resistant to both common sense and facts.”
I rubbed my eyes and nodded. “All right, then. I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you all day. If you need anything, let me know.”
I almost hung up, but then Harry told me to wait. He drew in a breath and then sighed.
“I talked to Amy Ledgerman in St. Louis,” he said. “She told me about your relationship with Christopher Hughes.”
I wasn’t ashamed of my past, but I didn’t tell people about it, either. My life was my own, and I decided who shared in it.
“I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t have a relationship with Christopher Hughes.”
He sighed. “I didn’t say that well. She told me he assaulted you. I’m sorry, hon.”
The line went quiet. I drew in a breath.
“Harry,” I said, after a pause, “I like you a lot, and I like your family a lot. I don’t need your pity, though. It happened. He hurt me, but I’m over it now. And if he didn’t kill Megan, he shouldn’t be in prison for her murder. That’s it. End of story.”
“You okay with him being released?”
I leaned back in my chair. “No, but I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, either.”
“I guess you don’t,” he said. His voice brightened a moment later. “I’ll be busy tonight, but Irene and Carrie are home. Carrie brought her boyfriend home from college. He seems like a nice kid. They’re making a lot of food tonight for dinner, so if you want company, head over.”
I forced myself to smile even though I didn’t want to smile.
“I appreciate the offer, but Roger needs me at home. He gets lonely without me.”
“Sure. If you need anything, let me know.”
I wished him luck with his case and then hung up. My chest and arms felt heavy. That phone call had sucked out every ounce of energy I had. On a normal night, I would have grabbed dinner and a few shots at a bar nearby, but during fair week, the bars would be full to the rafters. I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to be alone.
After checking my email one last time, I turned my computer off and got in my old truck to go home. Christopher Hughes was the lead story on St. Louis Public Radio. They didn’t mention me, but they discussed Megan and Emily and said they had lived with Christopher for a time and that Christopher and his wife had been well-respected foster parents. They threw around the word innocent a lot. I wondered what numbskull had done their fact-checking.
The story was going national. Even Delgado would have to recognize that we had Megan Young in our morgue soon. The whole thing made me want to scream at the top of my lungs. These people had never met Christopher Hughes, but they were championing his cause as if he were some kind of hero who could do no wrong.
I didn’t want to believe the man who raped me would get out of priso
n soon, but I couldn’t stop it. Not only would they let him go, though, they’d expunge his record, clear his name, and give him a few million bucks for his time. I couldn’t stop that or even slow it down, so I’d deal with it in the only way I knew how: I’d keep my head down, I’d keep my ass in gear, and I’d do my job. Until somebody invented a time machine, I couldn’t change what had happened, but I sure as hell could prevent Christopher from hurting anyone else. That was why I had become a cop. He didn’t know it, but Christopher had made me into the person I was.
One day, he’d regret that.
18
January 2006
The cop took me out of my English class and drove me straight to the county police headquarters in Clayton. Megan Young had been missing for a week, but everybody knew she was dead. Christopher had gone from rape to murder, which didn’t surprise me in the least. After the things he had done, I hoped Christopher would die in prison, and I hoped he died screaming.
When we got to the station, the cop dropped me off out front and directed me to Lieutenant Julia Green on the front steps. She was in her forties and wore jeans and a navy blazer. She would have done well in the foster care system. With one glance, I knew not to mess with her. Maybe it was the way she kept her chin up, maybe it was the way she held the gaze of everyone who walked by, maybe it was the gun and badge at her hip. I couldn’t say what it was about her, but I liked her before she said a word.
“Hey, Joe,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt your class, but we’ve got some things to talk about.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not into school.”
She furrowed her brow and turned toward the building. She didn’t tell me to follow her, but she didn’t have to. My legs followed of their own accord.
“I’ve heard a little about you, and I thought you liked school,” she said, glancing at me as we passed into the building. From the exterior, the police station almost looked like an old, redbrick schoolhouse. Inside, though, it was a modern office building. We walked through a reception area to a bank of elevators. “You had good grades, at least.”
I shrugged. “It stopped being important.”
Julia hit the button for the third floor and glanced at me with disapproving eyes.
“For some people, school’s not important,” she said. “For you, it is. You’re too smart to waste what you’ve got.”
“Maybe I’m not as smart as you think,” I said. She shrugged.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. I didn’t care what people thought about me, but that stung. Before I could respond, the elevator pinged as the door opened, and we walked into a busy open-concept office. There were desks pushed against one another in four-person groupings. Gray partitions offered a modicum of privacy and blocked noise.
“This is where the magic happens,” said Julia. “We’ve got twenty-four detectives on staff. Homicide gets the headlines, but we get the job done up here, too.”
“Are you important?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said, smiling just a little. “I’m a woman doing her job.”
By the deference people paid her, I would have said Julia undersold her position. We walked to a small office tucked away in the corner of the floor, where she had a view of the street below and a coffee shop across the way. I looked out the window while she sat down.
“Have a seat,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I said, continuing to look out the window.
“Sit down, Joe,” she said, her voice a little sharper. “I don’t like people hovering over me.”
I turned around and crossed my arms but didn’t sit.
“Why am I here?”
Julia considered me for a moment before crossing her arms and matching my posture.
“You’re here because I wanted to give you an update on Megan Young.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
Other people might have lied or tried to soften the blow somehow. I liked that she had been honest. I walked to a chair in front of her desk and sat down.
“Did you find her body?”
“No, but we found her blood in the trunk of Christopher Hughes’s car.”
“So Christopher killed her,” I said. She nodded. “Figures.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
“I know that,” I said, narrowing my gaze at her. “It’s your fault. It’s Mr. Ballard’s fault. It’s the judge’s fault. It’s her mom’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault but mine. It wasn’t Megan’s fault, either. You people let us live with a monster.”
“You’re right,” she said, her voice calm. “Christopher Hughes is a monster, but he won’t hurt anyone again.”
I wanted to believe that, but I couldn’t. My fingers curled into fists, and heat rose to my face.
“How do you know?”
“We’ve got a strong case,” she said.
“Tell me about it.”
Julia blinked a few times, but then she pushed her chair back. I expected her to walk around the desk and escort me outside. Instead she reached into her bottom right desk drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder, which she put on the desktop in front of me.
“I can walk you through this, but it’s a little graphic. You sure you want to see it?”
“Show me how you plan to put him away.”
“Okay,” she said, opening the document. We glossed over the first few dozen pages of typed reports before getting to anything interesting. “Diana Hughes—Christopher’s wife—reported that Megan Young went missing on Monday, April 3rd. The call came in at four in the afternoon when Megan didn’t come home from school. Subsequent interviews revealed that Diana had been out of town the weekend prior and that Emily Young was the last person to see her sister. That was on Saturday, April 1st, at 1:00 in the afternoon.”
“I remember that,” I said, nodding. “Diana was pissed. Christopher kept telling her that Megan would show up, but she never did.”
Julia nodded and turned a few pages. “Uniformed officers talked to Emily, Christopher, and Diana Hughes. They also visited her school and confirmed that Megan hadn’t been in class. They referred the case to our missing-persons section.”
“I never talked to a missing-persons detective,” I said.
“You wouldn’t have,” she said. “Mr. Ballard took you out of the house the moment Megan disappeared. The missing-persons detectives read through the reports written by the uniformed officers, and then they talked to Christopher and Diana. With Diana’s permission, they searched Megan’s room. They found staining on her bedsheets, which they determined to be seminal fluid.”
“It was Christopher’s,” I said. “That’s where he raped her. He raped me on the couch in the living room.”
She paused and then nodded. “Detectives at the time couldn’t prove it was Christopher’s, but it gave them reason to conduct a deeper search. They also called me and Travis in.”
“And Travis is your partner?”
“Detective Travis Kosen,” she said, nodding. “We found a significant quantity of blood in the trunk of Christopher Hughes’s car. That blood evidence allowed us to acquire search warrants for his businesses and other property he owns.”
“I didn’t realize he owned a business,” I said. I swallowed and looked at my hands, feeling small all of a sudden. “Nobody told me. He had this huge home, and I didn’t even ask what he did. That probably makes me stupid.”
“Sweetheart, you had enough to worry about in that man’s home,” said Julia. Normally when someone called me sweetheart, they were being condescending or rude. She wasn’t, though. She seemed to mean it as a term of affection. I looked away when she smiled at me, unaccustomed to that kind of attention.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Mr. Hughes owns three bars in the city and two gas stations in the county. We didn’t find anything anywhere.”
“So you’ve got no
thing on him except the blood,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Until yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“Diana Hughes started divorce proceedings against her husband after we interviewed her. She kicked him out of the house and packed up his stuff. Yesterday, she cleaned the garage and found his underwear stash.”
She didn’t clarify, so I had to ask the obvious question.
“What’s his underwear stash?”
“We found fourteen pairs of panties in a box in his garage, including one of yours and one of Megan’s. You two had written your names on the waistband. In addition, he had hair clips, bracelets, necklaces, key chains, and rings belonging to other girls.”
I balled my hands into fists and exhaled through my nose.
“He kept souvenirs after he raped us.”
“That’s what it looks like,” she said.
I felt violated all over again. My lower lip trembled, and I tried to say something, but I couldn’t get it past my throat.
“You need some water?” asked Julia.
“I need a gun so I can kill him.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she said.
“If he had fourteen pairs of underwear, that means he raped fourteen girls.”
“That’s possible,” said Julia, nodding. “We haven’t been able to determine the owners of the other garments yet. Emily identified a ring, though. It belonged to her sister. She only took it off at night. Combined with the blood in his car, the semen and other body fluids in her bed, and the panties—all of which we can tie to Megan via DNA—homicide detectives brought him in for an interrogation.
“This morning, he signed a written confession to the murder of Megan Young. In exchange, he’ll receive life in prison. We took the death penalty off the table.”
My hands trembled, and my heart pounded.
“What about my rape?”
Julia drew in a breath and averted her eyes from mine momentarily. “Your rape was harder to prove. Without forensic evidence, it would be your word against his. We know what Christopher did to you, and we’re convinced that a competent judge would believe you, too, but that’s not enough to convict somebody.”