She was Dying Anyway

by P. D. Workman

  Bowman shrugged. “In the case of a missing child, or someone we have evidence was kidnapped or in danger. But just a routine missing person… no. They tend to show up on their own and we don’t want to waste precious police resources on someone who just went out on a drunk.”

  “He didn’t go out drinking! He was hit on the road!”

  “Yes.” He had a sip of his beer, which was almost empty. “We know that now, but we didn’t know it then. To start with, it was just a routine missing person with no evidence of violence. No ransom. No sign that there had been a fight. No witnesses that he’d been taken by force. He just disappeared off of his property.”

  “His car was still there. Did you think he just walked away? Off of a property twenty miles from the nearest town?” Her voice rose accusingly.

  “It’s just policy, Ms. Morton,” Bowman reassured her. “You were not wrong to suspect that something had happened to him. Your instincts were right on.”

  She nodded, seeming appeased by his words. She fiddled with her drink for a minute, making tracks in the condensation on the side with her finger.

  “So, they started an investigation after he had been missing for twenty-four hours,” Ashley said. “They got people out searching the property, even though I had already looked everywhere for him. And they got scent dogs out to see if they could track him.”

  Zachary nodded. “And that’s when they found him?”

  “He was in the ditch beside the road, but you couldn’t see him because it was overgrown with weeds and grass and bush. They just covered him up.” Her voice was cracking like an adolescent’s.

  Zachary gave her a sympathetic smile. He didn’t reach out to take his hand, too awkward when he had only just met her. “I’m sorry. Do you need a minute?”

  At that point, the waitress came with their meals, a welcome distraction. The plates were delivered and they each took a few bites of their dinners before attempting to continue the conversation.

  “Why don’t you tell him the police findings?” Ashley suggested.

  Bowman nodded. He took a big bite of steak and chewed it vigorously for a few minutes before offering any comment.

  “Date of death was the night he disappeared. Exact time unknown. Gross examination suggests he was hit from behind and to the left, which is consistent with him being found in the right-hand ditch if he was walking away from the farm, toward the highway. As Ms. Morton said, the body was hidden by the overgrowth. Both she and the police had driven by the location several times without seeing him from the road.”

  “Any tire tracks?”

  “It’s a rural road, but it is paved and gets a fair bit of traffic because it joins two highways. If you know it goes through, you can use it as a shortcut. But there was no fresh rubber along the stretch of the highway before the collision to indicate an attempt to stop. There was a minor skid mark and tire tracks where a truck had pulled over after the point of collision. Since it’s just a rural road, there’s really no shoulder to pull onto and it isn’t a safe place to stop in the dark.”

  “So someone might have stopped after hitting him.”

  Bowman agreed. He glanced at Ashley and continued. “The driver says he got out of the truck, looked at the damage on the truck, and looked for any sign of an animal he had hit along the side of the road.”

  “But he didn’t see the body because it was hidden in the ditch.” Zachary pushed the food around on his plate. “Is this the driver who hit him, or someone who just happened to be along? I thought you said it was a hit and run.”

  “As it turns out, it was more of a ‘hit and stop and have a look around and then leave’,” Bowman said with gallows humor. “As he didn’t know he had hit a person, he didn’t call it in. He got back in his truck and drove away.”

  “He really didn’t know what he had hit?”

  “Apparently.”

  “He knew very well!” Ashley insisted. “It was no accident!”

  “You asked me to talk about the police findings. That is the police finding.”

  Ashley closed her mouth, pressing her lips into a thin, straight line. Bowman gave her a moment in case she wanted to say something else, then went on.

  “The driver self-reported. Not for a couple of days, but later when he got suspicious that maybe it wasn’t just an animal he had hit out there.”

  That seemed a little suspicious to Zachary, but he nodded and made a note of it. “You don’t think that he was just waiting until he would be clean of any drugs or alcohol before reporting it?”

  “We followed up with his insurance company. He had filed an insurance report the morning after the accident—er, MVC—saying that he had hit an animal and giving the pertinent details.”

  “That could have just been a complete cover-up,” Ashley broke in.

  “Sure,” Zachary agreed. “I would have to look into it further to see how well his story held together. But he could be telling the truth. If you hit a person in a small car, you’re going to get a lot of damage and know for sure what you hit. But a bigger truck… it wouldn’t do as much damage to the vehicle.”

  “It was a semi taking a shortcut,” Bowman informed them. Zachary nodded. A lot of inertia behind something like that. He would have to hit something pretty big to make a big impact on a truck of that size.

  “And you’ve interviewed this driver and decided that you believe his story. It was just an accident.”

  “I didn’t interview him personally. But interviews were conducted. The final autopsy results are not in yet. They’ll want to run a tox screen and see if there is anything else suspicious, but chances are, it’s going to be ruled an accident pretty quickly. There are, as yet, no indications of foul play.”

  “Richard didn’t drink,” Ashley said.

  Zachary smiled politely at her. “What?”

  “They aren’t going to find anything on a tox screen. Richard didn’t drink. He didn’t take drugs. He didn’t take anything. He was very careful.”

  “Did he have some kind of history of alcohol abuse?”

  “No, of course not!” Her reply was vehement. She shook her head an put her fork down loudly on her plate. “He did not have anything to do with alcohol. Not ever.”

  “Religious? Personal decision? No family history…?” In Zachary’s experience, people weren’t teetotalers for no reason. It was the society norm to have a drink now and then, particularly on social occasions, an people didn’t fall outside the norm without a conscious decision.

  “He just didn’t think it was a good idea,” Ashley said primly. She took a sip of her own drink and picked up her fork again. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “No,” Zachary agreed, glancing down at his own glass of water. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “So would you take the case?” Ashley asked him tentatively. “Would you look into it, dig down deeper than the police did, and prove that it was really an intentional homicide, not an accident?”

  “I can’t guarantee the results,” Zachary said. “I can’t tell you what my findings are going to be or whether you’re going to agree with them. Is there really a case to be made for intentional homicide? What are you reasons for thinking it wasn’t just an accident?”

  Ashley took a bite of her salad and chewed it slowly. “The driver got out of the truck and went to have a look,” she said. “That tells me that he knew exactly what he had done. He got out to make sure Richard was really dead.”

  “Or he got out to look for the animal he had hit, but not seeing one, decided to go on his way.”

  “I know Richard. He would never be careless like that, walking with his back to traffic. He would have walked on the other side of the road so he was facing oncoming traffic. He would have gotten off of the road if there was a truck coming. He was very careful to avoid traffic accidents. He would never have let something like that happen.”

  Zachary scratched down a couple of notes and closed his eyes, thinking about it. “Were you t
here that night? Did the two of you live together?”

  “I have my own place, but I stayed over with him a lot. It just depended on what our schedules were like. That night… I went home.”

  “Because you wanted to? He wanted you to? Whose idea was it?”

  “I don’t know… I don’t think either one of us said specifically. It was just one of those things… mutual. I had things to do, he had things to do. So I went home.”

  “And you realized he was missing when? The next morning.”

  “Yes.” Without prompting, she went on to give him the details. “I called him every morning. We always chatted for a few minutes over coffee. Just touched base, talked about how our days were going to be. Couples stuff. It didn’t matter whether we were together or apart, we always had that talk.”

  “So you called and he didn’t answer.”

  “Right.”

  “How often had that happened before?”

  “It wasn’t unusual… he would be getting breakfast ready or shaving and he would call me back once he was free.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “I waited a while, then called again. Over and over. He still didn’t answer. I texted him. I didn’t know what else to do. I went to work for the morning, but I couldn’t keep my mind on my work, I was so worried about why he wasn’t answering. So I took the afternoon off and went to see him. I thought… maybe he was sick in bed. I really couldn’t think of anything else. It never occurred to me that he might have left the house.”

  “He didn’t normally go for a morning jog or walk?”

  “No. We both thought that was a little silly. Not that there’s anything wrong with it if that’s how you choose to get your exercise! But we both had fitness equipment and club memberships. No need to brave the weather and the traffic if you could just take a spin on the stationery bike while watching the morning news. It just seemed a lot more… civilized.”

  Zachary looked at Bowman. “How was he dressed?”

  “Comfortable, casual. Not dressed for the office, but not dressed for bed or for a jog either. Jeans, t-shirt, warm jacket. Sneakers, not loafers.”

  “Where did he work? Did he have a stressful job?”

  Ashley gave an uncomfortable shrug. “He was… a janitor. Well, somebody has to be! It was a good, steady job. It paid his expenses and he was putting a little away. I bring in good money from my job, so if we got married…” Ashley swallowed hard and didn’t finish the thought. She was still in the process of figuring out how to manage without him. She still thought of him as being there, present with her, and the thought that they didn’t actually have a future together anymore was startling and tragic.

  “Nothing wrong with a good, honest job,” Bowman asserted. “We checked him out and there were no indicators that he was into anything illegal on the side. One hundred percent legit.”

  Zachary was glad that the police investigation bore out what Ashley had to say about her deceased partner. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find something more when he had a chance to really look for any issues. He smiled and nodded at Bowman.

  “Good. It helps with an investigation when I’m told everything.”

  He looked at Ashley. She didn’t jump in with more details. He had a feeling she was holding back, but he didn’t know what kind of information it was she was holding back. She claimed that Richard was clean, no drugs or alcohol, holding a custodial position. No problems with the law.

  “What was Richard’s background?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Custodial jobs are usually entry-level. People don’t stay there unless they don’t have a choice. Did he have any education? Did he grow up with his family or in the system? It doesn’t sound from his name like he is an immigrant whose qualifications were not accepted here.”

  “No. He just… I don’t know. That’s what he could get, so he stayed there. He and his family grew up in Minnesota.”

  “Are they still around?”

  “No.”

  “Hobbies?”

  Ashley’s brows drew down. “I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

  “I wonder how he spent his time. If he wasn’t doing something he enjoyed for work, then I assume he was getting satisfaction from something else he was doing at home.”

  She gave a helpless shrug. “No… no hobbies. I guess he just… we did things together. Went out to eat or watched TV. Nothing… special.”

  Zachary tried to think of what else to say. He still didn’t know what made her so sure that it hadn’t been an unfortunate accident. Was she in denial? He didn’t like to take a case just based on the fact that she was in shock over Richard’s death. She’d come around to it and then wouldn’t want to pay him.

  “I’ll need a retainer,” he said. “If you really want to go ahead with this. But I don’t hear anything that leads me to believe it was an accident. I’ll need money up front, and you need to be prepared for the fact that I might not find anything that supports your feeling that it was accidental. The police are pretty thorough…”

  “But you’ve solved cases before that they thought were accidental when they were really murder.”

  “Yes. I have.”

  “That’s why I need you. I need someone who is willing to suspend belief and not just follow what the police say. If you come back with it being an accident… I guess I’m going to have to live with that. But I’m not going to find out anything if I don’t pursue it. I really need to know. I need to know what happened to Richard. He wouldn’t have just gone out walking int he middle of the night and gotten in an accident like that.”

  “Okay.” As Zachary’s dinner got cold, he outlined the financial terms and conditions for Ashley, and she nodded and ate her meal and didn’t blanche at the rates he gave her and the upfront retainer. Eventually, Zachary had given her all of the warnings he could think of. “Well, if that sounds okay to you, I’ll write it up. You sleep on it tonight and make sure it’s really what you want. If you wake up in the morning and have changed your mind, no harm done. Just let me know. If not… I’ll start in on what the police have gathered, and see what else needs to be done.” Zachary looked at Bowman. “Can I get access to the case files?”

  “You know how it is. It’s an active investigation, so no. But talk to the right people and push the right buttons, and that could change. Your friend Joshua Campbell is on the case, so it probably won’t be too hard. He was happy with the work done on the Salter case.”

  Zachary nodded, relieved. There were plenty of cops at the police station who didn’t like him or didn’t want anything to do with a private investigator, but Campbell was not one of them. He’d always been civil toward Zachary. Sometimes, like in the Salter case, he had even given Zachary a tip or given him leave to investigate in a direction he knew his own officers wouldn’t be able to pursue.

  “That’s great. He won’t give me any trouble.”

  “Good,” Ashley approved. “You always hear stories about how cops and private eyes can’t get along together, or cops and the FBI. I’m glad to know that’s just pulp fiction.”

  Zachary exchanged looks with Bowman. “Oh, it’s not always fiction. But it shouldn’t be a problem on this file.”

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  He was Walking Alone, book #4 of Zachary Goldman Mysteries is coming soon!

  About the Author

  For as long as P.D. Workman can remember, the blank page has held an incredible allure. After a number of false starts, she finally wrote her first complete novel at the age of twelve. It was full of fantastic ideas. It was the spring board for many stories over the next few years. Then, forty-some novels later, P.D. Workman finally decided to start publishing. Lots more are on the way!

  P.D. Workman is a devout wife and a mother of one, born and raised in Alberta, Canada. She is a homeschooler and an Executive Assistant. She has a passion for art and nature, creative cooking for special diets, and running. She loves to read, to listen to au
dio books, and to share books out loud with her family. She is a technology geek with a love for all kinds of gadgets and tools to make her writing and work easier and more fun. In person, she is far less well-spoken than on the written page and tends to be shy and reserved with all but those closest to her.

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  Please visit P.D. Workman at pdworkman.com to see what else she is working on, to join her mailing list, and to link to her social networks.

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