Scene of the Crime: Who Killed Shelly Sinclair?

by Carla Cassidy

“What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know...tell me about your family. Are your parents still alive?”

  “Yeah, they’re alive but I don’t have any relationship with them. I haven’t had anything to do with them since I turned eighteen.” A faint hint of resentment colored his tone.

  “Why is that?” she asked curiously.

  He swallowed the last of his second glass of bourbon and then leaned back in his chair, tension riding his features. “My parents divorced when I was thirteen, and I became the tool they used to hurt each other for the next five years. It was dirty, it was messy and I swore then that I’d never marry and have children who could be used as pawns if things went bad.”

  His eyes had gone the moss green of swampy depths. “By the time they finished with me, I didn’t like either one of them and I definitely didn’t like myself.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Last I heard my father had moved to California and my mother is in Florida. Neither of them had much use for me when I became legal age and I’d definitely lost all respect for both of them.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Olivia said. She had no idea what it was like growing up with that kind of family dynamics. It was an explanation as to why he was a bachelor and intended to remain so.

  “What about you? I know you don’t have your father anymore, but did you have a good life growing up?” he asked and some of the shadows lifted from his eyes.

  “I had a wonderful family life,” she said. “My parents were loving and supportive and I was spoiled to distraction. The worst day of my life was when my father died. He was standing in the kitchen on a Saturday morning making pancakes when he just dropped dead from a massive heart attack. He was gone before anyone could do anything for him.”

  She ran a finger over the rim of her empty glass. “My mother and I were devastated, and that’s when my mother became such a worry wart about me.”

  “She must hate your job.”

  Olivia smiled, the gesture renewing the ache in the top of her head. “She does, but she also knows it’s not only what I do but who I am. Actually for the most part my mother is almost as innocent as Lily. She believes in the goodness of people and that’s part of her charm and why I try to protect her from knowing too much about what I do.”

  It had been a long monologue and when she finished, she gazed out the window where raindrops had begun to slide down the glass.

  Between the trauma that the night had brought and the booze she had consumed, she was suddenly achingly exhausted.

  “I think I’d like that spare room now,” she said.

  Daniel jumped out of his chair and was immediately at her side. He grasped her by an elbow and helped her up and then led her down the hallway into a guest bedroom decorated in shades of blue. He seemed to be holding her by the elbow a lot, guiding her one place or another. But the warmth of his hand on her skin was welcome and made her feel not quite so all alone.

  He dropped his hand, and she stood in the doorway as he walked over and lowered a shade at the window and then turned down the bed. “Sit,” he said and pointed to the edge of the bed. She obeyed, too exhausted to do anything else. “I’ll go get you a T-shirt to sleep in,” he said and then disappeared from the bedroom.

  She fought the impulse to curl up into a fetal ball. Although she was bone weary and her head throbbed with a dull ache, her brain spun a thousand miles a minute.

  She’d been in town just a little over a week and already she’d been threatened by a mutilated stuffed animal and a note and somebody had tried to kill her.

  If Josh and Daniel had waited another minute before leaving the station tonight, there was no doubt in her mind that she would have been dead. The perp would have used that knife to stab her to death.

  Who had been behind the attack? Had it been somebody they had already interviewed? Somebody still on their list to be interviewed? Or had it been one of the officers she was scrutinizing?

  Daniel returned to the room, a folded white T-shirt in his hand. “Thanks,” she said as she took it from him.

  “The guest bathroom is just across the hall. Everything you need should be there, but if you can’t find something let me know.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’re doing for me.”

  He smiled softly. “It’s all in a day’s work. Now, get into bed. You should feel better in the morning, and by then maybe some of the men will have more answers for us.”

  He left the room and Olivia pulled herself up wearily from the bed and went across the hall to the bathroom. There was no way she was going to shower tonight, not with her head hurting and the slight wooziness of too much bourbon.

  She found a clean washcloth and washed off her face and neck, the warm soapy water doing little to alleviate the cold chill that had been inside her since she came to on the pavement in the parking lot and realized what had happened.

  She stripped off her clothes and pulled on the T-shirt that smelled of fresh-air fabric softener and the faint hint of Daniel’s cologne.

  When she scurried from the bathroom back to the bedroom, she heard Daniel talking softly on the phone in the living room. At the moment she didn’t care what he might learn or who he was probably speaking to. She was out of order for the night, and there would be time enough in the morning to deal with whatever needed to be done.

  She laid her clothing on a nearby chair, placed her gun on the nightstand within easy reach and then turned off the overhead light. She crawled beneath crisp white sheets and released a deep sigh. Her body relaxed into the unfamiliar mattress, so much more comfortable than the futon at her home where she slept every night.

  A soft knock sounded and Daniel opened the door. “All settled in?” he asked and walked to the side of the bed. The light from the hallway spilled into the room, making it easy for her to see his handsome features.

  “Just waiting for the Sandman to come and take me to sleep land,” she replied. “Is there any more news? I heard you on the phone a few minutes ago.”

  “I was just checking in with Josh, and no, there isn’t anything new. But you don’t have to think about that now.” He reached out and pulled the sheet up closer around her neck.

  It had been years since Olivia had been tucked into bed by anyone, but what Daniel was doing felt like that. “On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst day of my life, I’d say this day is hovering around twelve.”

  Daniel stroked a strand of her hair off her forehead and away from her face and then to her surprise he leaned down and gently kissed her forehead. “Try to get some sleep, Olivia. I swear to you that I’m not going to let anything else happen to you again while you’re here in Lost Lagoon.”

  He turned and left the room, obviously not expecting a reply from her. She couldn’t have replied anyway, for a large lump of emotion had jumped into the back of her throat the minute his lips had touched her.

  She had a killer after her and a department to clean up, but at the moment equally concerning was the fact that she feared she was falling in love with Lily’s “Deputy.”

  Chapter Seven

  It was just after seven the next morning when Daniel heard the water running in the guest bathroom. Olivia was up. He’d been awake, showered and dressed for an hour.

  He’d spent that time drinking coffee, making lists of alibis that needed to be checked out for the time of the attack on Olivia and chomping at the bit to get into the office and take a look at the knife that had been found at the scene.

  He’d specifically told Josh he didn’t want anyone else processing the knife. Daniel knew the odds weren’t good that he’d find any fingerprints on it, but items sometimes gave up other evidence.

  He’d also made a list of who had been interviewed in the Sinclair murder case and who they had
yet to talk to. The other task force members had focused on people who had been on the periphery of Shelly’s life, specifically her girlfriends at the time of her death.

  He and Olivia had decided early on that the two of them would take on the potential major players in the murder, but they hadn’t had enough time yet to talk to anyone except Eric Baptiste.

  Things had moved too fast, had spiraled out of control without any real warning. The attack on Olivia now had given a new urgency to everything.

  He took a drink of his hot coffee, the liquid adding to the burn that already existed in the pit of his stomach. It was a burn of rage that had begun the moment he’d realized Olivia had been assaulted and might have been killed.

  He looked up from his notes as she appeared in the kitchen doorway. Thankfully she looked rested, clear-eyed and determined. “Good morning,” he said. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like a baby,” she replied. She walked over to the counter where a clean cup sat next to the coffeemaker. She helped herself to a cup and then joined him at the table.

  “Looks like you’ve been busy,” she said and gestured toward the notes in front of him.

  “Just writing down names and thoughts.”

  “Anything new come up while I slept?” She took a sip of her coffee.

  “No, nothing as far as evidence or suspects, but I’ve come up with a new plan,” he replied.

  She raised an eyebrow. “A new plan? Sounds interesting.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “We’ll see how interesting you find it once it’s implemented. My plan is that from now on you go no place without me. That means I follow you to and from the station every day and you aren’t out of my sight unless you’re safe in your home.”

  He reached under the papers and pulled out a business card. “This is the rest of the new plan. It’s Buck Ranier’s card, and I want you to get a security system installed at your house today. Charge it to the department and tell your mother it’s standard practice for the sheriffs in Lost Lagoon.”

  She held the card and stared at it and then slowly nodded her head. “Okay, consider it done.”

  The fact that she’d acquiesced so easily let him know that she was still frightened, although hiding it very well. “Then I’ll go home this morning and get the security system installed. Hopefully it can be done this morning and I can be back at the station by noon,” she added.

  “And I think the next person we need to interview is Mac Sinclair. He works out of a home office and is some kind of computer tech guru. It’s probably a good thing he’s his own boss, because rumor is he has a bad temper.”

  “And we know he didn’t like Shelly dating Bo, so he definitely sounds like somebody we need to talk to,” she agreed. She took another drink of her coffee. “We need to step up our pace.” A faint tension rode her voice, belying the calm of her expression.

  “We’re going to work as long and as hard as possible to find out who attacked you,” Daniel replied in fierce resolve.

  “I can’t lose track of the reason I’m here. I still need to find out who is dirty and who isn’t in the department and solve Shelly’s case,” she replied.

  “If we find out who attempted to kill you last night, then I believe we’ll either know who murdered Shelly or we’ll have the identification of a dirty cop. Unless you brought a killer with you from Natchez, then I’m sure the attack on you last night was tied to one of the other two issues.”

  “So, we continue to work the Sinclair case and I continue the internal investigation and hopefully by solving one of those we’ll know who came after me.”

  “Exactly,” Daniel replied.

  Olivia finished her coffee and then stood and carried the cup to the sink. “I need to get home and get this security system done so we can get back to the real work.”

  Daniel got up from the table. “I’ll take you back to the station to get your car and then I’ll follow you home. When you’re ready to return to the station, then call me and I’ll tail you from your house back to the station.”

  She frowned. She obviously wasn’t thrilled with his new plan, but he didn’t intend to back down. She was his boss, but she was also a woman he cared about and boss or no boss, she was doing this his way.

  It was just after nine when Daniel walked into the squad room after following Olivia home. She’d confirmed with Buck to get the security system installed by noon and she was to call Daniel when she was ready to return to work.

  Daniel headed directly toward the small evidence room and found the plastic bag with the knife that had been found by Olivia’s body the night before.

  He set it in the center of his desk and then sat and stared at it. He instantly identified it. He’d used one dozens of times when eating at Jimmy’s Place.

  It was a wooden-handled wickedly sharp steak knife with the familiar JP engraved in the handle. Josh pulled up his chair next to Daniel’s.

  “Not much help,” he said. “Anyone who has ever eaten or worked at Jimmy’s Place could have taken one of those without anyone being the wiser.”

  Daniel looked at his friend wryly. “Are you trying to put me in a happy mood as I start a new day?”

  “Just sayin’,” Josh replied. “I’ll be shocked if you get any prints off it.”

  “Yeah, so will I,” Daniel agreed. “But I’ll print it anyway and see if the blade holds anything that might tell us something about who was carrying it last night.”

  “Before you get all involved with that, I need to talk to you about something.”

  A discordant tone in Josh’s voice forced Daniel to give him his undivided attention. Josh’s features were troubled. “What, Josh? What’s going on?” Daniel hoped to hell Josh wasn’t about to confess to having something to do with the drug-trafficking scheme or anything else illegal.

  Josh drew in a deep breath and then released it slowly. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything, but up until last night Savannah had made me promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Tell anyone about what?” Daniel asked curiously.

  Josh stared at the wall just behind Daniel’s head. “I don’t know, maybe I should have said something before now, but Savannah just wanted to forget the whole thing.”

  “Forget what?” Daniel asked with a hint of impatience.

  Josh focused on Daniel once again. “About a year before Shelly was murdered, Savannah dated Neil Sampson a couple of times. He coerced her into having sex with him before she was ready.”

  Daniel straightened up. “You mean he raped her?”

  “Yes. She didn’t want to do anything, but he forced it on her. Savannah thinks it wasn’t really rape, though, because she didn’t specifically tell him no but ‘finally just let it happen’ and then never dated him again.”

  “Oh man, I’m sorry,” Daniel said.

  “I think she’s afraid to come to terms with it.” Josh nodded and smiled weakly. “But her telling me is a sign she might be ready to start.” His smile faded into a thoughtful frown. “Then last night I got to thinking. Shelly and Savannah looked almost exactly alike, and right before her murder Shelly told her friends that she had a sticky situation on her hands.”

  “And you’re wondering if maybe that sticky situation might have been that Neil Sampson forced himself on her, too?”

  “The thought kept me up most of last night,” Josh admitted.

  “Savannah had already proven that she wasn’t going to tell anyone, but Shelly had more friends and was bolder. Neil probably knew that Savannah would be too embarrassed to tell anyone, but Shelly was a wild card.”

  Daniel rolled the new information over in his brain several times. Was it possible that the handsome, slick city councilman had a secret worth killing for? Was it possible he’d raped Shelly and had been afraid she’d tell somebody?<
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  “I think this just moved Neil up the food chain,” he finally said.

  “I didn’t know anything about the attack on Savannah until we got together, and she wanted me to keep it to myself. I probably should have said something sooner,” Josh repeated regretfully.

  “You said something now,” Daniel replied.

  “I’ll let you get back to your work on the knife,” Josh said and scooted back to his own desk.

  It was just after noon when Olivia came through the door. Daniel immediately jumped to his feet and followed her into the office.

  He closed the door behind him as she sat behind her desk. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “Getting to work,” she said briskly.

  “You were supposed to call me when you were ready to come in.” He was angry with her and the surge of anger inside him surprised him.

  “I figured there wouldn’t be a problem with me driving from my house to here.”

  “You figured there wouldn’t be a problem walking to your car in the parking lot last night,” he countered. He took off his badge and slammed it down on her desk. “I won’t stick around and watch you make mistakes that put you in potential danger. You either do this my way or I’m taking the highway.” He was somewhat stunned to realize it wasn’t an idle threat.

  She leaned back in her chair, her brown eyes shining with a hint of amusement. “Are you overly dramatic often?”

  Some of the steam left him. “Only when people I care about are involved and are being pigheaded when it comes to their own safety.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment and in the very depths of her eyes he thought he saw a longing, and desire for her punched him in the gut.

  “Put your badge back on, Deputy Carson,” she said. “I promise from now on we’ll do things your way when it comes to my safety.”

  “And that’s a real promise?”

  She leaned forward and raised her right hand. “That’s a real promise.”

  He grabbed his badge and pinned it back on and then sat in the chair across from her desk. “Did you get the security system installed?”