by Dan Padavona
Kaylee pulled out of the parking space and revved the motor before turning onto the thoroughfare. Since purchasing the new car, she’d discovered a new sense of freedom, as if invisible chains snapped and fell off her shoulders. The wind tossed her hair as she weaved through traffic, shooting past vehicles, gunning the motor to beat the red lights.
As she passed the beauty salon and a defunct gymnasium with boards over the windows, she thought about the teenage clerk. The girl reminded her of Tina Garraway, Georgia Sims, and all the popular snots who’d pushed Kendra around during school. How dare the clerk question Kaylee’s fashion choices? At twenty-nine, was she too old to wear designer clothes? Ironic. Kaylee looked ten times hotter in those skirts than the emaciated witch behind the counter would. Ten times hotter than Tina or Georgia. If Kaylee traveled back in time and strode through high school in her new jean mini, every boy would want her. Guys like Harding Little and Wade Tenny would kill for her.
Kill for her.
Kaylee burst out laughing.
Her phone buzzed. At the next red light, she glanced at the screen. It wasn’t a message. She’d set up news alerts for articles mentioning Harding Little and Tina Garraway. A piece from the Syracuse news chronicled Garraway’s brief career as a reporter at channel seven. Tina had received a news guild award after she broke a story about a plant leaking chemicals into a creek behind a housing development. Cancer rates were four times higher than the national average in that neighborhood. Kaylee scrolled down. Her eyes stopped on a quote from Sheriff Thomas Shepherd.
Kaylee tapped her foot while she waited for the light to change. Why was the sheriff asking anyone with information about Tina’s death to come forward? Didn’t the dolt realize Tina slipped in the tub and cracked her skull open on the faucet? It happened all the time. A freak accident. Kaylee admitted to herself that she’d lost control with the golf club. Yet she’d been careful to strike Tina where her enemy cracked her scalp on the faucet. Just a few blows to ensure Tina didn’t regain consciousness. Ever. No one could prove an intruder murdered Tina.
A horn blared behind her. Kaylee checked the mirror. A punk boy raised his palms in exasperation and pointed at the green light. She wanted to shift the car into reverse and bash into the boy’s vehicle. Her hand moved to the gearshift as the horn wailed again. Now he raised his middle finger.
She refused to dent the Alpha Romeo. She cherished her new baby. Kaylee slammed her foot against the pedal and shot through the intersection. Rubber shrieked against macadam. She left the boy in the dust.
Further down the road, she pulled the car behind a restaurant and typed Sheriff Shepherd’s name into the search box on her phone. It was so easy to locate people on the internet. That’s how she’d read about Tina and found Harding Little and Georgia Sims. Georgia had a LinkedIn profile and counseled battered women at a local shelter. What a joke. Throughout high school, the little witch had made her classmates miserable. She probably got off on being around abused women. Maybe it reminded her of the times she tortured Kendra and other outcasts. She’d also located Wade Tenney, now a hotshot accountant in Kane Grove. Kaylee couldn’t wait to see Tenny again.
It didn’t take long to locate the sheriff’s address. A home along the lake shore. How sweet. The house was only two miles away.
Kaylee followed the lake road out of the village center until she spied the A-frame poking into the blue sky. All those windows allowed her to peer inside the home as she motored past. The open floor design blended the living room, dining area, and kitchen together. A massive dog padded past the window. The dog might be a problem, if Kaylee decided the sheriff knew too much about her.
Thomas Shepherd wasn’t inside his house. Instead, she spotted him in the backyard, emptying a bag of charcoal into a grill. A teenage girl in a wheelchair sat beside the sheriff, her black hair tied into a bun and fluttering in the wind. Did Thomas Shepherd have a crippled daughter?
The sight surprised Kaylee so much that she pulled onto the shoulder and stopped the engine. She craned her neck for a better view. The sheriff seemed to be living the good life. He owned lake frontage, and a guest house stood behind the A-frame. She could wreck everything for him. It wouldn’t be difficult now that she knew where he lived.
But the teenager in the wheelchair pulled Kaylee’s attention. So vulnerable and meek. If Kaylee wanted to hurt the sheriff, she’d start with the crippled girl. That would teach him to poke his nose into her business.
Kaylee raised the phone and photographed the girl. A moment later, the guest house door opened, and a dark-skinned boy in his late teens ambled into the yard. What the hell? How many people lived on Thomas Shepherd’s property?
“You running some freaky commune, Sheriff?”
Kaylee made herself laugh. She snapped a picture of the boy while he spoke to the girl in the wheelchair.
“Don’t go anywhere, kids. I’ll return soon.”
13
Deputy Aguilar picked Thomas up at his house the next morning. The F-150 had a flat, and he’d asked the mechanic to tow the truck to the garage. He kept a spare, but the strange circumstances surrounding the deaths of Harding Little and Tina Garraway played around inside his head and made him want to hurry to work. He was thinking about Garraway’s injuries and the barking dog in the neighbor’s yard when Aguilar arrived. She handed Thomas a green tea after he climbed into her red RAV4.
“You didn’t need to buy me tea,” he said, holding up the cup in salute.
“The Broken Yolk was on the way, so I stopped. What happened to your truck? Did you run over a nail or something?”
Thomas drank from the cup and winced. Hot.
“Couldn’t tell you. The truck drove fine last night. It’s possible I hit something on the way back from the grocery store.”
“Did the pressure gage go off?”
“Not last night, but my back tire was flat as a pancake when I woke up this morning.” Thomas blew on the tea and sipped. “I probably ran over glass or got a nail stuck in the tire. No big deal.”
“If you need a ride, I’ll drop you off at the garage this afternoon.”
“Appreciate it, Aguilar. I figure they’ll replace the tire by then.” They were halfway to the station when Thomas’s phone rang. He scrunched his brow. “It’s the county coroner’s office calling.”
When he answered, he expected to hear Virgil’s voice on the other line. Claire Brookins spoke instead.
“Sheriff, we need you to come to the office right away. There’s an interesting development in the Tina Garraway investigation.”
“Thanks, Claire. We can be there in fifteen minutes.”
Thomas told Aguilar about the call, and the deputy turned onto the highway. When they arrived at the coroner’s building, a silver-haired doctor led them down a long hallway to the examination room, where Virgil and Claire hovered over Tina Garraway’s body. A white sheet covered the woman from the waist down. Bright lights angled over the corpse, who lay upon a rolling metal table.
Thomas crossed the floor. “You wanted to see us?”
“Thanks for coming down.” Virgil rubbed his forehead. “I may have been hasty when I declared Ms. Garraway’s death accidental.”
Thomas met Aguilar’s eyes.
Virgil motioned at the dead woman. “My assistant discovered inconsistencies with the head wounds. Claire, if you will be so kind.”
Claire took a nervous breath. Though the medical examiner’s assistant possessed the knowledge and skill of someone with twice her experience, she’d never run point on a murder. “Tina Garraway has multiple contusions and fractures to her skull.” Her voice warbled, and she cleared her throat. “It’s unlikely the victim incurred the injuries when she struck her head on the faucet. For that to happen, she would have needed to lift herself up and fall down several times, striking her head on the faucet each time.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Aguilar said, moving in for a closer inspection.
“No, it doesn�
�t.” Claire straightened her shoulders. She was in her element now, confident and determined. “Look here.” She pointed at an image of Garraway’s skull. “At first glance, the fractures appear similar. But they’re not. We believe the fracture below her scalp occurred when her head struck the faucet. This alone might have knocked her unconscious, but it wouldn’t have killed her.” Virgil moved aside, a signal for Claire to continue. She enlarged the image on the monitor. “But there are three additional fractures, none of which match the shape of the faucet, where we removed the flesh and hair.”
Thomas bent over beside the monitor. “Are you saying someone ambushed Garraway while she lay in the tub?”
“Or attacked her after she stepped into the shower. There’s no way to determine if she fell before the attack, or the attack caused her to fall. Notice the shapes of the fractures? Someone struck the victim with a blunt object.”
“Like a baseball bat?”
“Something smaller, but rounded on the edges.”
Thomas sifted through weapons in his mind. It made little sense to attack someone with the hilt of a knife. Why not stab your victim? Perhaps the killer bashed Garraway with a gun, not wanting to pull the trigger and draw attention from the neighbors. No, that didn’t seem likely. He kept picturing a baseball bat. But it had to be smaller. Golf club?
Virgil and Claire led them through their findings for another five minutes.
Claire turned off the monitor and stood over the victim. “Now that we’re certain this was a murder, we’ll alter our work flow. If we find anything new, we’ll let you know.”
The doors closed on Aguilar’s RAV4. The silence was loud inside the SUV.
Thomas stared at his hands before he spoke. “Something about this case rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning.”
“The barking dog,” Aguilar said, glancing at the sun-washed windows fronting the coroner’s building. “The killer was already inside the house when Garraway came home.”
“We need to interview Garraway’s family and coworkers. If she had enemies, we need their names.”
“She was a television reporter. Maybe she angered the wrong person and ended up in a killer’s cross-hairs.”
Thomas blew out a breath. He’d wanted to believe an unlikely accident killed the reporter. Now he had a murderer loose in Nightshade County. Only a few weeks ago, serial killer Justice Thorin abducted Deputy Aguilar and locked her in a subterranean cell. Thomas blamed himself for her ordeal. Thorin kidnapped Aguilar after Thomas angered the killer and called him out during a television interview. As Thomas mulled over his error, Aguilar shifted into drive.
Thomas turned toward her as Aguilar took the highway ramp. “You holding up? If it’s too soon for you to investigate a murder—”
Aguilar shook her head.
“Dr. Mandal says I need to climb back on the horse.”
“Within reason. She wants you back in the field and doing your job, not chasing down killers.”
“But bringing murderers to justice is my job, Thomas. If I can’t help you find Tina Garraway’s killer, what good am I?”
“You’re invaluable, Aguilar. I’ve told you this a million times: you’re qualified to run the department. If you ran against me for sheriff, I’d vote for you. But sometimes we need to step back and give ourselves time to heal.”
“I’m better, I promise.” When Thomas gave her a skeptical glance, she nodded in understanding. “I don’t blame you for being concerned. But saving Lonnie McKinney from Justice Thorin reminded me of who I am and why I became a sheriff’s deputy. I refuse to spend the rest of my life blaming myself for shooting Avery Neal. He fired at law enforcement, and I did my duty.”
“You saved Lambert and Trooper Fitzgerald.”
“I don’t know about that. The point is, Neal murdered his own partner and would have killed Shawn Massey if I hadn’t stopped him. He gave me no choice. I see that now.”
Thomas stared into Aguilar’s eyes and found no sign she was being disingenuous.
“I’m proud of you, Aguilar.”
She snorted.
“Okay, coach.”
“I’m trying to be nice.”
“I’m just saying you don’t need to handle me with kid gloves.” She paused. “And for the record, I’m proud of you, too.”
“This better not be a public service announcement about autism awareness.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t overcome the odds. How many people take a bullet and live to talk about it? Now you’re sheriff of the county you grew up in. If you’re allowed to be proud of me, then I’m allowed to return the favor.”
“Well, thanks.”
“I mean it. I’ve got your back, Thomas.”
14
Raven slipped sunglasses over her eyes and donned a baseball cap. She sat outside a cafe beneath an umbrella, sipping a latte as Albert Slater yucked it up with three buddies across the road. According to Slater’s workers’ compensation claim, he’d lost use of his right hand. Raven waited for him to high-five a friend, so she could prove he’d filed a fraudulent claim.
She couldn’t decide who she hated more: the cheaters who gave injured workers a bad name, or the penny-pinching insurance companies. Either way, Raven lost. There were no winners when greedy companies fought malcontents. She blew the hair off her forehead and tossed the empty latte cup into the garbage. The camera hung around her neck, the telephoto lens drawing stares from the other customers. She wondered why Chelsey had accepted so many workers’ comp and infidelity cases this month. To make matters worse, Georgia Sims, the woman who believed someone wanted to kill her, had hired Wolf Lake Consulting. Raven wasn’t certain what Georgia Sims wanted. Someone to defend her? A private investigator to sit outside her house all night and ensure the boogeyman didn’t kill her?
With a grunt, Raven pushed the chair back, acknowledging she’d become jaded. If someone wanted to hurt Georgia Sims, Raven would defend the woman and catch the perpetrator. Sims worked at a battered women’s shelter, and Raven respected the hell out of anyone who defended the abused.
Raven left a generous tip on the table, setting it beneath the napkin holder so the bills wouldn’t blow away. Then she crossed the street and entered a municipal park at the edge of downtown. Slater continued to laugh with his friends as Raven ensured nobody watched her. She raised the camera to her eye and snapped a series of photographs. Nothing incriminating. The pictures showed Slater with an impish grin as he spoke. He kept his supposedly injured hand in the front pocket of his blue jeans. Once, he slapped another man on the shoulder, and Raven was sure she’d caught him. But Slater had used his left hand.
It was possible the man really was hurt and unable to perform his work duties. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time an investigation ended in the accused’s favor. She wanted to believe Slater was innocent, except the scumbag had also earned a deadbeat dad label. He’d abandoned his first family and refused to pay alimony or child support. The police hadn’t arrested Slater because his former spouse decided not to press charges. Raven’s own father had walked out on their family when she was seven. She couldn’t think of anything worse than a man who abandoned his family.
Slater’s group broke up. Two men piled into a Cutlass while the third turned into a bar on the corner of Main and Church. As Raven slipped out of the park, Slater climbed into a rusty minivan, honked twice, and backed into traffic. A sports car skidded to a halt, the driver braking to avoid a collision. Injured or not, Slater was a horrible driver.
Raven’s Nissan Rogue sat beside a parking meter on Main, half a block away. She hurried across the intersection, squeezing between vehicles lining up at the light. Another horn blared, this one aimed at her. She hopped the curb and slalomed between shoppers, not wanting to lose sight of her target. When Slater ran a red light and shot through the intersection, Raven felt certain she’d lost him.
She pulled the Rogue off the curb and weaved through traffic. Three blocks later, she caught up. For
once, Slater obeyed a red light. Four vehicles idled between Raven’s Rogue and Slater’s minivan. Perfect. She didn’t want Slater to see her in his mirrors. A mile up the road, Slater stopped the minivan outside a grocery store. Raven clicked pictures as he yanked a shopping cart out of the corral.
Dammit. He used his left hand.
She trailed him into the store. Muzak played over the speakers as she giggled at a jazzy version of a Hall and Oates song. Slater moved down the aisle and removed food from the shelves, always with his left hand. Each time, he glanced up the aisle, as if he sensed eyes on him. Raven had left the Canon beneath the passenger seat in the Rogue and switched to her phone. She pretended to text as she engaged the camera app and snapped pictures. Slater loaded the cart with garbage—cans of pork and beans, sugary cereal, soft drinks and beer. It seemed Slater was allergic to the produce aisle.
By the time Slater reached the checkout counter, he’d rung up a two-hundred-dollar bill of fatty foods. The man was a heart attack waiting to happen. Raven shot Chelsey a text.
Followed Slater for two hours. Never used his right hand. Guy might be legit injured.
Thirty seconds later, Chelsey replied.
Good to know. Stay on him for another hour, then head back to the office. Another infidelity case crossed my desk.
Raven chuckled without mirth. Just what they needed.
Slater requested help. The manager called a skinny teenage boy half Slater’s size to the checkout counter, and the boy loaded the grocery bags and pushed the cart toward the automatic doors. Slater shot a glance over his shoulder as he strode away. Raven lowered her head and turned to study the magazines. Did he just grin at her?
Raven set the magazine aside after Slater and the teenager disappeared through the exit. In the parking lot, the red-faced boy hefted the bags into Slater’s van. After the teen loaded the groceries, Slater scowled at him. The boy scampered away, eager to help anybody but Slater. The man spat. Phlegm missed the teenager’s sneaker by a few inches.