The Little Grave

by Carolyn Arnold

  “What am I doing?” Again, she spoke out loud as if some greater being would reply. But she had no reason to be struck by some sudden pang of guilt. She could justify her intended actions. Steeles kept their word and saw things through by whatever means necessary. And what Freddy had could help her live up to her promise to Malone not to cause drama.

  She got out of the car, keeping her badge where it was, clipped to her waist, and her gun in its holster on her person, and hurried up the front walk. She banged on the metal of the screen door, and the top half kicked against the frame. She tried a couple more times and was just about to walk away when the light turned on.

  The interior door opened, the person inside obscured by a nasty glare across the glass. “Whatcha want?” He was groggy, half-asleep, and pissed at the interruption.

  “I’m here for Freddy,” she said, punching it out with authority.

  The person stepped more into the light and she got a good look. Damien Rodriguez, street name Rat, and he was all of five-foot-five. She’d encountered him years ago when working a homicide and knew from then that his rap sheet showed he’d served time for dealing. She was quite sure he was guilty of far more than that, but she’d make peace with that if he could overlook her pending transgression.

  “What business ya got with—Hey, I know you. You’re that lady cop.”

  This had been a mistake. A part of her mind was screaming at her, but it was too late to turn back now. She was full speed ahead like a train on tracks. “Not here on police business.”

  “To hell you’re not. Get outta here!” He pulled on the door, but she stuck her foot in to stop it from slamming shut. His face gnarled up. “What do you think you’re doin’?”

  “Look.” She moved slowly and tucked her badge into her jacket pocket.

  “If you ain’t here to arrest us, why then?” Rat sucked his bottom lip in, then shoved it out.

  Her skin was crawling like eyes were on her, but she had to keep her focus on Rat. A brief glance over a shoulder could prove deadly. “Let me inside, and I’ll tell you.”

  He studied her and didn’t move.

  “Hey, you have no reason to trust me. I get that, but I’m here for personal reasons and I’m not about to conduct business out here, so either you let me inside or I’ll take my money elsewhere.”

  Rat stared her down for quite some time before withdrawing into the house and leaving the door open. She took that as an invitation to enter.

  There was a narrow staircase immediately inside to the right, and to the left was a living room that appeared to be busting at the seams, full of overstuffed and cracking leather couches and bulky end tables with pockmarks in the veneer.

  “Freddy!” Rat yelled, and pounding footsteps sounded overhead and hit the stairs.

  Freddy jogged down and scowled. “What the hell?” He glared at Rat, obviously recognizing Amanda too.

  “She says she’s here for personal reasons.” A smirk played at the corner of Rat’s mouth.

  “Really?” Freddy rubbed his jaw and circled her. “That true?” He stopped mere inches in front of her, his nose to hers.

  “It is,” she confirmed.

  A light brightened Freddy’s eyes and he smiled. “How interesting. What is it I can do for you, Officer?”

  “I need some…” She was tempted to leave it open for Freddy to make the determination based on her desired results, but it was best she stuck with what she knew. “Looking for some Xanax. I trust you can help me with that?”

  “Maybe.” Freddy let his gaze linger over her body.

  “Don’t waste my time. You have it or you don’t.” She was shaking inside but hoping that she was doing a convincing job of projecting herself as brave and in control.

  Freddy clucked his tongue. “Feisty. I like it.”

  “Like it less and get me the pills.”

  He put his hands on his hips and angled his head. “Normally I’d say the first taste is on the house, but you’re a cop. You pay. Five for fifty.”

  She fished into a pocket and pulled out cash. “Only have three twenties.”

  “I don’t make change.”

  “Make it six pills then.” She wasn’t about to get into negotiating with a drug dealer. She just wanted the business over with.

  Freddy snapped his fingers and Rat set out into the bowels of the house, leaving Amanda alone with Freddy, who was still ogling her.

  He ran his tongue along his top lip. “What makes a cop—”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Like you really give a shit.”

  Rat returned with a small baggie, which he gave to Freddy, who in turn extended it toward Amanda, but then drew his hand back. “Nuh-uh, money first.”

  She slapped the bills into his open palm, and he gave her the pills.

  He sniffed the cash. “Nice doing business with you.”

  She left as fast as her legs would take her. She never should have come. Never. She sure hoped the benefits outweighed the assumed risk.

  She got into her car, slammed the door, and eyed the pills in the baggie. Just one, she told herself, that’s all it will take to ease the pain. Besides, it was too late to turn back now.

  She unzipped the baggie and had one capsule pinched between her fingers when someone banged on the driver’s window. She jumped and the pills flew everywhere.

  Rat’s face was pressed against the glass, and he was pointing his finger down. She lowered the window a crack.

  “Don’t be showing up here again. You want more, you call, and we’ll arrange a meet.” He slid a card through the opening and waited for her to take hold of it, which she did with a trembling hand.

  “Just remember. We know who you are, Copper—Civic six four six.”

  Her stomach tossed. That was the car model and part of her license tag.

  He tapped the roof of her car and left with a smug smile on his slimy face.

  She put the window back up and looked at the empty baggie still in one hand, the card in the other. A simple card that could have come off Freddy’s home printer. It just had F and a phone number. She stuffed it into her console and set about searching the floor for the pills. She collected three from around her feet, but the others must have fallen under her seat. She bent forward and reached blindly beneath her but came out empty-handed.

  “Damn it all!” She got out of the car and searched using the flashlight on her phone. She found them, along with a plastic water bottle on the back floormat. She lifted it up. Empty. Just great. She’d never mastered swallowing pills dry and as she got into the driver’s seat again, she caught the time on the dash clock. Quarter past four. She really needed to get to the station. She sealed the pills in the baggie, zipped it in her coat pocket, and headed for the station.

  Nine

  Prince William County Police Department had about seven hundred officers and three stations, as well as seven other facilities for things such as public safety training, animal control, and licensing. Homicide, under the Violent Crimes Bureau, worked out of the Central District Station in Woodbridge. The building had opened a few years ago and was marked by a grand opening to the public. It was mostly a single-story redbrick structure with the exception of one second-story office tower, sided with formed aluminum panels and situated on a country lot surrounded by trees. It would have been a serene setting if not for the nature of the investigations that went on inside the station’s walls. In addition to Homicide, there were bureaucratic offices, including the one that belonged to the police chief.

  Amanda was ravaged by guilt and paranoia as she made her way through the front doors. As if everyone in the building would know that she’d just scored illegal prescription drugs—that they were on her person, no less. She watched people she passed for any tells they were onto her, but she was aware it had to be her imagination working overtime. After all, they’d have no way of knowing what was in her pocket. She still felt eyes on her though, but that was probably because Cud had opened his big mouth and anyone
working already knew about Palmer’s death. No one could claim PWCPD’s rumor mill wasn’t functioning.

  The homicide detectives were set up in low-walled cubicles to encourage ease of communication. She found Trent sitting at the desk in the space next to hers. He was absorbed reading something on his computer. She sat down at her desk and said to him, “How did you make out?”

  He slowly looked over at her, taking his gaze from his monitor. “I’ve uncovered a lot.”

  “Hit me.” She leaned back in her chair and swiveled. Nerves. She grounded her feet and stopped the rocking.

  “Where to start?”

  “Webb’s murder.” By far that was what she was most curious about, followed by what Palmer’d had on his person and immediate possession at the time of his incarceration, and then next of kin. She’d take whatever he had.

  “Open case.” Trent pushed back from his desk and joined her in her cubicle. “As CSI Blair told us, Webb was taken out by a gunshot, but not before he was tortured. All of his fingernails were removed, and he was burned with a cigarette on his chest and arms.”

  Trent gave her a few color prints of the crime scene. She’d never been squeamish, but CSI Blair had been on the mark when she said the crime scene was a bloody mess.

  “Looks like a slaughterhouse,” she said as she shuffled through the images, taking in the slashed photos and cushions—unmistakably tossed. “I’d say whoever killed Webb was definitely after something, and the knowledge of whatever that was might have gone with him to the grave. Who were the detectives on the case?”

  “Bishop and some guy named Jonah Reid.”

  “Bishop?” she pushed out. Cud. Unbelievable. Had he purposely not mentioned Webb’s murder at Denver’s Motel last night or not seen the connection? She popped her head up, but Bishop wasn’t at his desk. If he were, she’d be asking him why he’d failed to share that tidbit of information. “I don’t know Jonah Reid.”

  “Looks like he just had a brief blip with PWCPD. He was only here for a few months and then transferred out not long after Webb’s murder.”

  It must have been during the time she’d been healing and isolating, but cops came and went all the time.

  “Were there any suspects in Webb’s case?” If the two did turn out to be connected, it might give them a place to start.

  “No, but you’ll find this interesting. Webb’s murder is connected with another one. Ballistics matched to another cold case in Atlanta, Georgia, which took place a few days before Webb’s.”

  She straightened up. “Georgia?”

  “Yeah. A twenty-one-year-old stripper by the name of Casey-Anne Ritter.”

  She got up and rounded her chair. “So two murders… or three?”

  “Well, technically we don’t know the manner of Palmer’s death—” He stopped there under her gaze.

  “Was this Casey-Anne tortured too?”

  “Not exactly. Now, the medical examiner concluded that she’d hit the back of her head, likely from a push to the floor. She was found naked in her apartment bathroom.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “No evidence to confirm that, but she was shot point-blank to the middle of her forehead, just like Webb.”

  “Huh. Both shot execution style. Not exactly matching what happened to Palmer,” she said, deep in thought. Maybe she really was reaching to see a link between the cold cases and Palmer’s death.

  “Not entirely, I agree, but what about Palmer’s bag? We can’t dismiss that someone was looking for something from this Georgia woman and Webb. Maybe it was in Palmer’s duffel?”

  “So does Ritter tie back to Dumfries or just to Webb?” Amanda was still intrigued by the murders.

  “I don’t know, but I did a database search for Casey-Anne Ritter. No hits that are remotely close to matching that name. There are other Casey-Anne Ritters out there, but none line up for age.”

  “Okay, that has my attention. She must have been—what?—using a fake name and living off the grid.”

  “My guess.”

  “Still doesn’t give us any sort of link to Dumfries.” Her mind was spinning, and she grabbed onto her next thought. “Was Ritter’s apartment rummaged?”

  “Can’t say. Guess her place was rather sparse.”

  “Hmm. Let’s say the killer was after something. Question is, did they return because they’re still after whatever-it-was? They couldn’t get to Palmer in prison and came after him soon after his release?” She was trying to figure out how those cases could possibly tie in with Palmer’s—if they did. Really all they had was the fact the former business partners were both dead. Palmer hadn’t been shot. But, as she’d thought earlier, if he’d been murdered by being force-fed alcohol, that would have been torturous.

  “It is possible.”

  “Except for the undetermined manner of death,” she grumbled. If she listened to her gut though, it was telling her Palmer had been murdered. But it was the cause of death that was wreaking havoc on that theory. Rideout had said death due to alcohol poisoning was normally accidental, but it could have been the work of a psychopathic killer with time on their hands.

  “Yeah, well, I placed a call to find out what was taken from Palmer’s person at the time of booking. I wrote down what they told me. The official list will be forthcoming, but I asked specifically about a duffel bag. Well…” Trent paused there, and his eyes widened.

  He was going for dramatic effect, but she’d never been a fan of suspense. “And…”

  “He had twenty-five grand in cash in the bag when he was booked.”

  “Twenty— Wow. So where the hell is the money now?”

  Trent certainly had a way of burying the lead, and maybe the manager, Flynn, had noticed all the cash and that’s what had made him uneasy.

  “Good question, but so is: What was Palmer doing with all that money? Did the money have some nefarious purpose or was it simply earnings from the pawnshop that he was on the way to the bank to deposit the night of the accident?”

  She shook her head. “The crash happened on a Saturday night. All the banks would have been closed. Some institutions have a place to drop off deposits after hours, but I doubt anyone would use it for large sums of cash.”

  There was a brief period of silence, then Trent said, “Curious if Palmer’s missing money might be what Ritter and Webb’s killer was after, and, if so, did that person come back and take out Palmer? Then again, we may be jumping to the assumption there’s a connection between the three deaths.”

  “Add all that to the list of questions that need answers. We’ll need to dig into Palmer’s life before prison. And speaking of, did you have any luck finding next of kin?”

  “None. Parents have been dead for years and he was their only child. The closest blood relative is Rick Jensen, his cousin, who lives in Henderson, North Carolina, a three-hour drive away.”

  “Too far,” she said. Technically notifying next of kin was limited to the immediate family: spouse, children, brothers, sisters, parents anyway.

  “Thinking we might be best having a talk with Palmer’s former landlord, Jerrod Rhodes, and seeing if he can direct us to anyone. A girlfriend maybe?”

  Amanda recalled the girl in the photo from Palmer’s wallet. “We should definitely do that, but first I think we need to focus on Palmer’s last hours alive and speak to anyone that might help us with that.”

  “The Denver’s Motel employees then?”

  She nodded. “Makes sense. We should also find out where the whiskey was purchased and see if we can confirm it was by Palmer.”

  Trent pulled out his notepad and scribbled. She assumed he was making a note to visit nearby liquor stores.

  “Before we go though,” she said, “call the prison and ask for Palmer’s visitor list. An amount of cash like that, it’s possible Palmer could have owed it to someone, and they might also have shown up to try and collect from him at the prison.”

  Trent returned to his cube and placed the call.
r />   Detective Natalie Ryan walked past and offered a basic greeting of, “Hey.” All Amanda heard was, “You buy from a drug dealer.” Beads of sweat rolled down her back and she bounced her leg.

  Trent hung up. “The visitor list will be coming over.”

  “Great. You ready to go?”

  “Ah, yeah, sure. Lorraine Nash or David Morgan?”

  “Let’s start with Nash as she worked Sunday, the last day Palmer was alive.”

  “Sure.” Trent flicked his monitor off.

  Amanda spun and bumped right into Sergeant Malone’s chest. He held up his hands to brace her and stepped back.

  “Sorry,” she offered quickly, blushing.

  “No one was hurt.” Malone let his gaze go over her to Trent. “You two headed out?”

  “Yeah, have a couple of people to question,” Amanda said.

  Malone nodded. “Great. It sounds like you two have it all under control.” He met her gaze, and with the last two words, a sliver of remorse wormed through her.

  I have nothing under control! But as far as the world knows…

  “We do,” she said and tossed out a smile. She did her best to have it reach her eyes, but it was unlikely it had, given the suspicion reflected in Malone’s eyes.

  “Great,” he said.

  Trent started walking toward the hall and she followed.

  Malone said, “Just before you go, Detective Steele.”

  Trent turned and she held up her index finger to let him know she’d be there in a minute.

  “What is it?” she asked the sergeant.

  He leaned in and hunched to reach her ear. “Do you have your alibi?”

  She let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, but it was shallow regardless. “The ME hasn’t ruled that Palmer was murdered yet…”

  Malone shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Get out in front of this or—” He ran a finger along his neck.

  “I will.”

  “See that you do.”

  She held eye contact with him for a few seconds longer before hauling ass down the hall to catch up with Trent. With each step, it just sank in more and more the mess she was in. For one, she was in possession of illegally obtained drugs, and two, she had to manifest an alibi from thin air. But maybe she could return to the bar where they’d met and use her badge to whittle information from the woman who’d served them. If she went that route though, she could never return to the bar for risk of her name and her history getting out. But what was the lesser of two evils: the need to find a new place to pick up men or getting benched from the case? And the latter came with potentially worse consequences still. She could be assigned desk duty for the rest of her career or given the cases no one else wanted to touch. If things really spiraled out of control, she could be defending herself against murder charges or lose her badge. Some days she wasn’t sure if finding a new path in life—away from Dumfries, away from Prince William County PD and the county itself—was that horrible an idea. She could start fresh and rebuild her life. Then only she would truly know the hole that existed in her heart.