by Lisa Regan
“You Skinny D?” Gretchen asked as they drew up a few feet from him.
“Depends,” he replied.
“What’s your name?” Josie asked.
His gaze lingered on her for a beat too long. “You’re that cop, aren’t you? The one who’s always on TV?”
Josie showed him her credentials. “We’re not here to jam you up if that’s what you’re worried about, Skinny D.”
He laughed, his voice a rasp. “Don’t sound too good coming out of a cop’s mouth.”
“Then tell me your real name,” Josie said. “I’ll find out eventually anyway.”
“You here to arrest me for something?”
“We’re here about Krystal Duncan,” Gretchen said.
His eyes narrowed. “Who?”
Josie took out her phone and pulled up the photo of Krystal that had been used in the press since her disappearance. She held it out for him. Leaning in toward the screen, he cupped his hands over his eyes to shade the sun. “Oh shit,” he said. “Lady K.”
Josie heard her phone chirp with a text message and took it back. She swiped to see that it was from Noah. A booking photo for one Dorian Kuntz from three years earlier. In it, Skinny D was considerably thinner. He’d been arrested for possession with intent to distribute schedule-two narcotics. Scrolling down, Josie saw that the charges had been dismissed. He was thirty-eight years old, and he’d been arrested almost two dozen times on drug charges. Only twice had he been prosecuted, taking a plea deal both times and receiving nothing more than probation.
“That’s what you called her?” Gretchen said.
“Yeah, she was a reg—I saw her here a lot.”
Josie pocketed her phone and sighed. The sun beat against them out here in the open. Sweat gathered on her forehead and along her neckline. “We already know she bought pot from you, Dorian.”
His eyes widened at her use of his formal name. “Hey, not so loud, okay?” His eyes darted around them but up on the road, they were alone.
Josie glanced at Gretchen whose mouth twitched. Dorian noticed as well. “It’s not funny,” he said.
Gretchen flattened her lips into a straight line. She wasn’t sweating at all. Josie said, “No one said it was, but you’re right, Skinny D is probably a better street name than Dorian.”
He rolled his eyes and flicked his cigarette onto the ground. “What do you bitches want?”
Gretchen said, “When is the last time you saw Krystal Duncan?”
He folded his arms over his protruding stomach. Josie could see sweat stains in the places his shirt had creased into his skin folds. “Last week.”
“What day?” Josie asked.
“Tuesday. She always came on—I always saw her around on Tuesdays. Wait. Well, last week she was here Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Gretchen asked, “How long had she been coming here on Tuesdays?”
He shrugged. “Like, a long time. Years.”
“More than five?” Josie asked, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm.
“I guess.”
“You said last week she was also here on Wednesday. Did you talk to her?”
Dorian said nothing.
Gretchen said, “Listen, Skinny D. Krystal? She disappeared from her house last Thursday and then yesterday she turned up murdered. We’re trying to figure out who killed her.”
His eyes widened. “Lady K is dead?”
“You don’t watch the news?” Josie said pointedly. “Or go on social media? Her face has been everywhere for four days.”
He motioned toward the underside of the bridge. “Does it look like we get TV down here? Are you telling me she’s really dead? Like someone offed her?”
“Yes,” said Gretchen. “That’s what we’re telling you. I’m not interested in arresting you because you sold a dead woman some weed. I need to know what you know about Krystal. I need to know where you’ve been since Thursday night, and then I need to talk to anyone who can corroborate that.”
He reached up and rubbed his chin. “This is bad,” he muttered, almost to himself. “But look, I didn’t have nothing to do with anything that happened to Lady K. I been here all weekend just like I am all the time. A buncha people down there can tell you that.”
Josie said, “Great. We’ll get some statements after we talk with you. What can you tell us about Krystal?”
His head hung. He seemed genuinely saddened by the news of Krystal’s death, but Josie couldn’t tell if it was because he had had some affection for her or if it was because he was losing a regular client. “She was a good person, that’s what I know. She treated me like… like a human being, you know? Not like some guy she met up with here but was too good to actually talk to.”
Josie noted his vague wording—he still wasn’t willing to admit to a couple of detectives that he had been selling Krystal drugs. But she wasn’t sure that made him a murderer. While he might have been able to hold her somewhere under the bridge for a few days with no one being any wiser, there was no place nearby he would have been able to poison her with carbon monoxide.
“You have a car?” Josie asked him, changing the subject quickly, wanting to keep him off guard. A fat drop of sweat slid from the back of her neck down her spine. She resisted the urge to pull her polo shirt away from her body.
“Nah. If I need a ride somewhere, I ask someone. There’s a guy from one of the local churches who comes out here all the time. Brings us food, takes us to doctor’s appointments and shit like that.”
Gretchen said, “You said that Krystal came on Tuesdays but last week she was here on Wednesday as well. Why was that? Did she talk with you about anything? Anything at all?”
He shrugged again. “Lady K always wanted weed, okay?”
Still, he put the responsibility on Krystal. She had wanted weed. He hadn’t sold it to her.
“Fine,” Josie said. “She came here on Tuesdays looking for pot. Was there ever anyone with her?”
“Nah, she rolled solo. Always.”
Josie asked, “What did she want on Wednesday?”
“Something more potent, she said.”
“Like what?” asked Gretchen.
“Like painkillers or something. Like oxy or ketamine.”
“Did she get it?” Josie asked.
“Nah. There wasn’t any.”
What he really meant, Josie thought, was that he hadn’t had any to sell her and he didn’t want to send her to another dealer and risk losing her as a client.
“Besides,” he added. “I didn’t want her getting into all that. I told her that. She was a nice lady. Had a good job. A good life. Weed is one thing but once you start taking oxy or ketamine on the regular, it’s not good, you know?”
Painting himself as the hero, Josie thought. Yet he clearly didn’t know Krystal that well if he described her as having a good life. Losing her daughter had shattered her life, so much so that her coworkers worried she might harm herself.
“Sure,” Josie said without sincerity. “Had she ever asked about painkillers before that?”
“No,” said Dorian.
Gretchen said, “Did she say why she suddenly wanted painkillers?”
He pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and fished one out, putting it between his lips. As his hands searched his front pockets for a lighter, he said, “Don’t really remember. I mean she said a lot of shit that night.”
“Was she upset?” Josie asked. “Or did she always talk a lot when she came here?”
A lighter appeared in his hand. He lit his cigarette and took a long pull. On an exhale of smoke, he said, “She was upset that night. That’s why she wan—that’s why she asked about painkillers. I told her, ‘nah, you don’t want to get into those,’ and she said, like, she was upset and needed more than just weed or she was gonna lose it or some shit like that.”
Gretchen said, “Did she say anything at all about why she was upset?”
Dorian pinched the cigarette
between his thumb and index finger and held it away from his mouth. Smoke blew back at him and he blinked several times. “I don’t know. She said she found something out or something like that.”
“Found what out?” Josie asked.
He took another drag of his cigarette, held in the smoke for a second, and exhaled. The heat from the smoke made Josie feel like she was in an oven inside of another oven. She waved the smoke from her face. Dorian said, “I don’t know. She didn’t say. I didn’t ask. She just said she found something out, and she couldn’t deal with it. Said she needed something to forget everything even if it was just for a few hours. I just told her she couldn’t get painkillers down here. That was it.”
Gretchen and Josie exchanged a look, and Josie knew they were thinking the same thing: Dorian Kuntz didn’t look good for Krystal Duncan’s murder. Still, they had to do their due diligence.
“Dorian,” Gretchen said. “Does the word ‘Pritch’ mean anything to you?”
He tossed the butt of his cigarette onto the ground, close to the first one. His lips puckered momentarily. A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “What?”
“Pritch,” Gretchen repeated. “That mean anything to you? Sound like someone you know? Someone around here?”
“Never heard of it.”
Chapter Ten
Skinny D found three people under the bridge willing to corroborate his alibi. While Gretchen took down their personal information, Josie spoke with Noah on the phone to get as much information about Dorian Kuntz as possible. As it turned out, he was homeless, which made it even more unlikely that he could have abducted and held Krystal Duncan from Thursday evening through Monday morning. He had also told the truth about not owning a vehicle. As they got back into the car and pulled away, Josie said, “I don’t think he’s involved.”
Gretchen rolled down the windows and blasted the AC. Hot air rushed from its vents as the air conditioning system lumbered to life. “Me neither. I think the question at this point is, what did she find out that sent her to the bottom of the East Bridge looking for something that would get her obliterated?”
“According to Carly, without Bianca, she only had three things in her life: work, weed, and that support group.”
“Which is why we’re going to go talk to Dee Tenney right now,” Gretchen said. “I texted Mettner and had him message me her address.”
The drive to West Denton took longer than expected due to traffic. It was nearly dinner time and motorists all over the city were headed home at the same time. What should have been a fifteen-minute drive took nearly forty-five minutes. Josie tried to keep her mind on the case, but it kept wandering to Lisette and the night she’d been murdered. Trying to push those images out of her brain, she forced herself to find a memory of Lisette as she had been in life. Vivacious, grinning, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. Gray curls bouncing at her shoulders as she threatened to mow over anyone in her path with her walker. Without her realizing it, Josie’s hand had found its way inside her pocket and clasped the rosary bracelet. The medal dug into the flesh of her palm as they pulled up to a large, two-story, tan stucco home with a two-car garage and basketball net in the driveway.
This part of West Denton was the quietest and safest part of the city. In all the years that Josie had been on the force, she’d only been called out there twice—once for a car accident and once for a stolen bicycle. On the street where Dee Tenney lived, the houses were quaint and well kept, like something out of a magazine. The families that lived here were somewhere north of middle-class but south of affluent.
Josie followed Gretchen up the front walk and let her ring the doorbell. A moment later, Dee Tenney opened the door, her tight smile failing once she realized she was staring at two police detectives.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Gretchen said, “Mrs. Tenney, we need to speak with you about Krystal Duncan.”
Dee looked behind her momentarily before turning back toward them. The skin around her eyes tightened. “I have someone here,” she said. “But I guess, well, just come in.”
They followed her through a dimly lit foyer into a large, open kitchen with shiny hardwood floors and granite countertops. There was an island in the center of the room on which Dee had obviously been making a salad, given the large bowl of lettuce and around it, other vegetables in various stages of being cut up. To the right was a large wooden table with four chairs around it. A teenage girl sat in front of a laptop, earbuds plugging her ears. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail. She looked at them as they walked in, blue eyes wide and curious.
Dee stood awkwardly between the table and the island countertop, hands clasped at her waist. “Well, I…” she began. She gestured to the counter. “I was making dinner.”
“We won’t be long,” Josie promised.
Dee motioned toward the girl at the table. “This is Heidi. She’s… Well, I’m just looking after her for Corey. That’s my neighbor. He’s a single dad. Long work hours and all that. She’s a junior counselor at a summer camp, and she comes here after for dinner.”
Heidi took out her earbuds and said hello.
“It’s good to see you, Heidi,” said Gretchen.
Josie took a moment to search her brain for how they might know one another, but Dee filled in the blanks. “Heidi is the sole survivor of the bus crash,” she told Josie.
As if she didn’t want any more of the narrative to be constructed without her input, Heidi said, “My dad is single, always has been, and I get shuffled around to the neighbors. Well, not anymore, not since the accident. Only Mrs. Tenney wants to see me.”
Dee looked over at Heidi, stricken. “Oh, Heidi, that’s not true.”
Heidi laughed. “Yes, it is, Mrs. Tenney. It’s fine. I get it.”
Dee didn’t look mollified. She kept staring at Heidi with a mixture of horror and sadness on her face. Shaking her head, Heidi popped the earbuds back into her ears and resumed typing away on her laptop. Dee focused her attention on Josie and Gretchen but didn’t ask them to sit or offer them anything. It didn’t matter. The air conditioning alone felt heavenly. Josie plunged ahead. “We’re here to ask you about the support group that you and Krystal belonged to. I know you spoke to my colleague here over the weekend, but I was hoping you could tell me about it.”
“Oh,” Dee said, her posture loosening a bit. She walked over to the island countertop and began dicing tomatoes. “It’s just a few of us. Not everyone goes to it. We’ve been meeting once a week, sometimes more, since after the funerals. Honestly, I’m not sure if it hurts or it helps but this…” She waved the knife in the air. Josie saw tears gather in her eyes. “This experience—losing a child—it’s not something people understand or even know how to respond to. It’s a very lonely place to be, in the aftermath of something like this, and so we found that we could only talk with one another. Faye Palazzo, one of the other mothers, she had been seeing a psychologist and she set it up with that doctor.”
“Who is the doctor?” Josie asked.
“Paige Rosetti.”
Josie felt a jolt. She’d been going to Paige’s house for therapy for a couple of months now and had never seen any of the bus crash parents nor had Paige said anything. Then again, Paige wouldn’t say anything. Privacy was paramount in her work. Plus, Josie was only there once a week for forty-five minutes. She only ever ran into the patient who left before her. “Do you meet at her office?” Josie asked.
“Yes,” Dee answered.
Gretchen had her notebook out. “Tell me again who attends these meetings? You said not everyone goes.”
Dee went back to work on her tomatoes, her eyes downcast. “Well, obviously, Corey doesn’t go.”
Corey hadn’t lost a child, Josie thought, looking over at Heidi. He was the lucky one.
“Then there’s Nathan and Gloria Cammack. They’re divorced now. Gloria came at first but then once they broke up, she stopped coming. Sebastian and Faye Palazzo, and Krystal.”
“What about your husband?” Gretchen asked.
“Miles rarely comes to meetings.” She dumped the sliced tomatoes into the large bowl and rinsed the cutting board in the sink. “We’re separated,” she added over her shoulder.
Josie knew that many marriages didn’t survive the loss of a child so this came as no surprise. “When do you meet?” she asked.
Dee brought the cutting board back to the counter and started slicing cucumbers. “Monday evenings. Always Monday evenings.”
“Did you meet last night?” Gretchen asked.
Dee froze then gave a stiff nod.
Josie said, “It’s okay, Mrs. Tenney, if you told the group what happened.”
She looked up at Josie, tears now streaming freely down her face. “I’m sorry. That other officer, the good-looking one who took me back to the station, he said not to talk to the press. He didn’t say I couldn’t tell friends or family. You have to understand what a shock it was to find Krystal like that. We’ve all been through so much. It’s so hard. Every day is a struggle.” She used the back of her free hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. With a sniffle, she lowered her voice to a whisper, probably so Heidi wouldn’t hear her, and added, “It’s excruciating.”
Again, Josie found the rosary beads in her pocket. “I understand,” she told Dee. Of course, she could never understand. While she’d lost many people in her life, none had been her child. She did, however, understand the ways in which grief could paralyze and cripple you, make you do things you normally wouldn’t, the way it sometimes physically attacked you so that you could barely breathe.