“We need to ask about a former tenant, if you have a minute,” she said, her words coming back to her ears as if she was presenting his talking to them as an option.
“For a Steele, I always have the time.” He slurped some coffee and moved back, giving them room to enter the home. He took them to the kitchen table and sat at the one end. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Amanda and Trent each took a chair, across from each other and bookending Jerrod.
Jerrod hugged his cup. “So, I’m going to guess the tenant’s Chad Palmer. Am I right?”
He had to know her history. After all, he seemed up on her father’s life. “Yeah, how did you—”
“Last person I rented it to before moving in myself five years ago. He went to prison and left owing three months in back rent. Don’t suppose you know where I can reach him?”
How did a person in possession of twenty-five grand owe back rent? The only answer she could think of was it hadn’t been Palmer’s to touch.
“We’re actually here because Mr. Palmer was found dead this morning,” she pushed out.
“Oh.” Jerrod looked up toward the ceiling and took another slurp of coffee. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
She recoiled at the mention of the Lord. And mysterious ways? If there was a greater being, they were distant and aloof, uncaring and doing nothing to rectify the suffering of humankind.
“We’re here because we’re trying to piece together a bit of Mr. Palmer’s life before prison. Maybe you know of someone he was close with. A girlfriend perhaps?”
Jerrod mumbled something indiscernible. “He lived with some blond tart. She wore far too much makeup if you ask me.”
Including Ruby Red lipstick?
Jerrod went on. “They’d get into some doozies of arguments. He’d be drinking and fly off the handle. Not that I ever think he struck the girl—that I know of. I would have wrung his dang neck for that, but I think they threw stuff at each other.”
“And how do you know all this?” Trent asked.
“I was living in the house next to this one at the time,” Jerrod said. “The lady in the neighboring unit would come get me and I would come hustling over straightaway. I wasn’t having them damaging my property.”
“Understandable, but probably not too wise.” Domestic disturbances were often the most dangerous—and unpredictable—calls a cop responded to.
“Ah, maybe not, but nothing went awry, and I never did find any damage.”
“That’s good at least,” she said. “And the people who rented the neighboring unit?”
“Long gone now. Moved on.”
She nodded. “What happened to Mr. Palmer’s girlfriend after he went to jail?” It twisted her gut to demote his action to simply that when her heart continued to cry out for justice.
“I gave her the boot. Right away. I’m not anyone’s banker. I’d reached my limit. Tried going after her in small claims court but got nowhere.” Jerrod was getting red in the face. “And can you believe that she tried to strong-arm me into letting her stay because she claimed she was pregnant?”
Amanda gulped. It seemed so incredibly unfair to think Palmer may have had a child out there while her beautiful daughter was six feet under, and her other child would never know life outside of the womb. “With Mr. Palmer’s kid?” she forced out.
“I don’t know. Who knows? She probably didn’t.”
“Do you remember her name?” Amanda asked.
“Courtney Barrett.”
“Do you know where we could reach her now?”
“Don’t. Sorry.”
“No, you’ve been a big help,” she assured him.
“Anything I can do to help Chief Steele’s daughter,” Jerrod said as she got up.
She stopped at that, cringing. She considered her next words. “Thank you for your time, help, and discretion,” she said, and she and Trent saw themselves out.
Back in the car, she stared at Jerrod’s front door. Go back five and a half years and Palmer had lived right there. He would have stood on that porch, walked through that door, made memories and lived a life there. She clenched her fists. He could have made a child there.
Trent looked over at her in the passenger seat. “If Palmer owed Mr. Rhodes three months’ back rent, why was he carrying around twenty-five K?”
“Thought the same thing. I think it’s safe to conclude that the money wasn’t really Palmer’s. Maybe his girlfriend can help us figure out who it really belonged to.”
Fourteen
The address on file for Courtney Barrett was in Dumfries and, after a few knocks, either no one was home or no one was answering. “We’ll have to try again later,” Amanda said.
“And now what? We still have a little time to pass before the autopsy.”
The clock read just after nine AM. It would take place thirty minutes away at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas. They could go back to the station and dig into the cold cases, but she was fiercely craving a coffee after spending the last twenty minutes or so smelling Jerrod Rhodes’s. “Let’s head toward Manassas. Better early than late, and we can get a coffee, something to eat.”
“A Jabba. And I was thinking you’d never say it.” He smiled.
“A Jabba?” She hooked a brow.
He laughed. “Coffee. Blame my little sister.”
“I didn’t know you had siblings.”
Trent smiled. “It’s not like you asked.”
“Okay, I deserved that.” She managed a small laugh, but like any expression of mirth these days, it felt shallow and void of true emotion.
“Not that you’d have a reason to ask or know. But, yeah, I have two sisters. One younger, one older. I’m the middle child.”
“As I put together from ‘one younger, one older.’ But how did Jabba become your term for coffee?”
“Wendy was seven, and I was fourteen when I started drinking coffee.”
There was quite a gap between the siblings. There was a fourteen-year span between all her siblings, but the largest existed between her and her older brother Kyle, who was four years older. “You started drinking coffee at fourteen? And I thought I had an addiction.”
“I think all cops are coffee addicts.”
She bobbed her head. “I can get behind that. Go on.”
“She was seven, as I said, but already a movie lover with an affinity for sci-fi. She loved the old Star Wars movies and watched them repeatedly—back to back.”
“Ah, Jabba the Hut, and sorry to hear that… about the back-to-back thing.” It was bad enough that Kevin had insisted they watch the original three movies once a year at Christmas.
Trent smirked. “It’s not that they’re bad movies, and they have quite a following, but over and over? Anyway, one day Wendy tattled on me to our parents and said, ‘Trent drinks Jabba.’” He laughed. “My parents figured out what she meant was java, not Jabba, and grounded my butt for a week.”
“Sounds like you have strict parents. And you could have done a lot worse than drink coffee.” She wasn’t going to dredge up all the things she’d done behind her parents’ backs. Sneaking out of the house to meet up with a boy, drinking in the woods, tipping cows in farmers’ fields—not an urban legend but also not the nicest thing to do upon reflection—and those acts of tomfoolery and defiance just scraped the surface.
“It didn’t feel like it at the time.” He turned serious and glanced over at her as he slowed at a yellow light. “Seeing that disappointment in their faces destroyed me.”
“Obviously that effect wasn’t long-lasting,” she said.
He smiled and shook his head. “Well, I still can’t drink the stuff without thinking of Jabba the Hutt.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re a strange one, Detective Stenson.”
“Thanks. I’ll wear that compliment with pride. It certainly beats normal.”
“What the heck is normal anyway?” she countered.
“Precisely.”
“All righty then, let’s go get a Jabba.”
He started them down the road toward Manassas.
What her new partner didn’t know was their light, jovial conversation had riddled her with pain—not just at the memory of an annual ritual with Kevin—but she was stabbed with the recollection of how close she’d been previously to her five siblings. The six of them had been more than blood; they’d been the best of friends. But now, because of what Palmer had done, the toll he’d taken on her soul, she’d created a chasm between herself and all of them. Each of them had tried reaching out to her several times after she’d worked to withdraw herself, but after she continuously shuffled them to voicemail or sloughed off their invitations, they had given up. She couldn’t blame them, but she also had to stop blaming herself. If only it was as easy as simply deciding how to feel about something and poof that’s how it was.
Fifteen
There was always something about seeing a body on a metal slab that made death seem more final, not that Amanda could define why. Regardless, she had mixed feelings as to how she’d feel upon seeing Palmer’s body draped with a white sheet. It had her breathing shallow and her skin clammy.
“I wasn’t sure if you were going to turn up for the autopsy or not.” Rideout was all chipper for standing in a smock readying to perform what was essentially a dissection of a once-living, breathing, human being.
“Oh…” She put her hand over her back pocket where her phone was. “Sorry, I should have texted to let you know.” She normally did but she was starting to realize nothing was “normal” about this case. It had her feeling more scatterbrained than was her usual since the accident. She kept thinking about Hannigan and Rhodes and how they’d known who she was and the connection between her and Palmer, the victim. She could be on borrowed time with this case.
“Trent, is this your first time attending an autopsy?” Rideout asked.
Trent nodded.
“Really?” Amanda asked, surprised. He was new to being a detective, not to being a cop.
He pressed his lips together and shrugged.
“Huh,” was all she said, but maybe if she were him, she wouldn’t have told her either for fear of being berated or judged. She was surprised, though, that he’d made it to detective without attending one.
“Well, a lot of people can’t stomach this,” Rideout chimed in, “but it’s part of the circle of life—at least for those less fortunate. I won’t get into when an autopsy is necessary and when one isn’t.” He grinned and waved a hand. “Maybe when I have some time though.”
No one could say Rideout was rigid and all business. He obviously loved his job and took pride in sharing his knowledge. “I’m pretty sure Trent knows what necessitates an autopsy…” She glanced at Trent.
“I do,” he said.
“Swell then.” Rideout rubbed his hands together. “Now, I’d already conducted a preliminary investigation of the body before you got here, and I have found some things of interest.” Rideout snapped on gloves and pulled back the sheet to Palmer’s waist, exposing his naked torso.
She was staring into the face that had haunted her nightmares, her waking thoughts, her memories and now it stalked her present reality. In her mind it had always been a face of destruction, of evil. Here in death it was more a reflection of calm, peace, and serenity. Similar to how she’d felt at the motel when she first saw him, Palmer appeared vulnerable, more man than monster, but looks could be deceiving.
“Detective?” Rideout prompted.
“Ah, yes?” Amanda looked up to meet Rideout’s eyes.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Rideout didn’t say anything for a few beats and Trent was so still beside her she wondered if he was breathing.
“Sorry, go ahead,” she said with a limp smile.
“As I was about to show you…” Rideout pointed to some light discoloration at the base of Palmer’s throat. “I didn’t notice this at the scene. In fact, I didn’t see them in any pictures that were taken, but in cases where tissue is damaged closer to the time of death, contusions can surface afterward.”
Amanda angled her head, focusing on Palmer’s neck, trying to tell herself the entire time it was someone else’s body. “Someone strangled him?”
“Restrained him with force at least. Then there’s this.” Rideout lifted Palmer’s left hand and traced a bruise that circled his wrist. “Both wrists are like this, as are his ankles.”
“He was bound,” Trent said, barely above a whisper. “But with what?” Trent leaned in closer to the cadaver, showing he had no issue with being around the dead.
“Your guess would be as good as mine. The markings are not distinguishing enough to make a firm conclusion, but I’d hypothesize it was something narrow and rigid.”
“Zip-ties?” Trent suggested. “They’re easy to come by from any hardware store.”
“Kidnap/murder kit one-o-one,” Amanda said drily. She noted her internal conflict.
Rideout proceeded to turn Palmer onto his side. “As you can see, livor mortis is present in his shoulder blades, lower back, and it continues down to his buttocks.”
In layman’s terms, livor mortis was the process of blood settling in the lowest parts of the body upon death. It could tell a lot about the position in which a person had died and disclose whether they had been moved some time after death.
“He died in that bed, or lying down anyhow,” Trent said, impressing both her and the ME.
“Bravo. But look at this.” Rideout pointed to faint vertical bruises on Palmer’s back. “I had CSI Donnelly return to Denver’s and check the spacing between the spindles on the chairs in the room. Based on her measurements, I feel confident in saying that he was probably bound to one of them.”
A small dining table with two spindle-back chairs, both tucked in like they were never used…
Rideout added, “Everything in that room was staged—Palmer, the bottles, the open curtains, the TV being on—to make it look like he just accidently drank himself to death.”
Amanda shivered, suddenly colder than she ever remembered being in her life. “So alcohol overdose was the cause of death?”
“More precisely, aspiration caused by ethanol poisoning, as I said on scene. Only I think someone forced the alcohol on him. And that means you’re looking for a determined, yet controlled and patient killer.” He paused and leveled a meaningful eye on her. “It could be someone affected by his drinking to choose this method to kill too.”
The coffee she’d drunk before going there rushed up her throat, and she clamped a hand over her mouth and swallowed roughly. “I’ve gotta— I’ve gotta go.”
“Wait,” Rideout called out. “Aren’t you staying for the autopsy?”
She waved a hand over her head. “I’ve got all I need for now.”
“Amanda,” Trent called out behind her as his footsteps slapped the linoleum floor. “You all right?”
She kept hustling. She wasn’t all right by a long shot. Palmer’s death was starting to feel very personal.
Sixteen
Amanda’s body was dragging but her mind was still sharp. As a cop you either adapted to long hours without sleep or you found another career. She had to get her alibi in order, and she had to get it now. Palmer had destroyed her life five and a half years ago and it seemed he was back to stomp out any embers. She waited by the passenger door of the department car for Trent to unlock the doors. He didn’t say anything to her as he got in and silence spanned between them for several minutes before Trent spoke.
“Guess we know it was murder now,” he said, likely believing that he was treading on neutral ground.
“Right, but you heard the murder method?” She turned on him, her entire body quaking. Somehow having the MO confirmed out loud by the medical examiner had stamped it further home.
“I did… Not sure—”
“Let me lay it out for you. After the accident, all I wanted was Pal
mer dead. I fantasized about taking him out.” She paused there and scanned Trent’s eyes for disgust, judgment, shock, but none of those emotions were present. She shot out, “I thought of doing exactly what happened to him.”
“You’re obviously not the only one,” Trent volleyed back.
Not the only one… His words jarred a memory loose. “When I was healing from the accident, my father and I dug up whatever dirt we could on Palmer. You know, to supply to the prosecution to establish his character and typical conduct. My dad tracked someone down whose son had been friends with Palmer as a teenager. They were both sixteen when the car his son was driving lost control and veered off the road. His son became a quadriplegic. Palmer walked away with barely a scratch. But the father of this boy told my dad he was quite certain that Palmer had been driving, despite evidence to the contrary. He said he never liked his son hanging around Palmer.”
“Maybe we should pay him a visit.”
“Sounds like a good idea, but there’s something I’d like to take care of first.”
“Name it.”
“My alibi.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” Trent said gingerly.
“Of course I didn’t— if that was a question.”
“It wasn’t. Besides, I can’t imagine anyone thinking you killed Palmer. You’re a good person—a cop at that.”
“I don’t know about that.” If only her rookie partner had any idea of the hedonistic murder methods that she had fantasized about closer to the time of the accident and after Palmer’s lame sentence hit. Her mind skipped to the Xanax in her coat pocket. Why hadn’t she taken one yet? Hadn’t she already done the worst of it just by scoring them from a drug dealer and thereby putting her career in jeopardy? She was busy with the case, sure, but she was also procrastinating, rethinking whether she really wanted to get hooked. Because once she was back on them, she wasn’t sure she’d have the willpower to stop again.
The Little Grave Page 10