Miller Avenue Murder: An addictive police procedural legal psychological thriller

by Nenny May

  “The Sherriff and I were discussing the victim, our Jane Doe, when I saw you pull in from his office.”

  “Mhmm…We should appoint you as the much-needed door man, you saved me… five seconds on my way to my office.”

  He scuffed. “Very funny,”

  “Thank you, I try,” She slowed by the elevators. Restless, the bombing in her chest, insistent, erratic. she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “You know Mrs. Campbell was quite young when she got married for the first time,” She drew a strained breath stabbing the elevator buttons.

  "Why do you feel that’s something I should know, was there like an age difference in the marriage or... something?" Rachel asked, features scrunched, listening to the lift as it whirred, reaching the ground floor.

  "Oh, you could say that." Detective Dawson considered. "She was twenty when she got married and her late husband Christopher had been in his late fifties. We're talking thirty-years apart. If that isn't something for the people of Tillamook to talk about then I don't know what is."

  "And how’d you dig this up?"

  “Sherriff Pierce, he seems to know what there is to know about the Campbell family.”

  He said just as the elevator doors parted, and two Uniforms strode out. “If I were you, I would spend some time with him might give you some perspective on this case.”

  She would do just that. She would do whatever it took to get to the bottom of Blake Campbell's murder.

  Detective Dawson had joined her into the opaque box, her fingers fumbling with the button to Steve Woods's floor below hers. He noticed the tremble in her fingers. “Don’t get nervous on me, Olson. If we play our cards right, we can close the book on this in record time.”

  Her thin carved brows dipped and her eyes, a soil brown narrowed at her partner. They had conflicting perceptions on a job-well-done. There was a thin line between Rachel and Detective Dawson. She couldn’t take home a cold case, that wasn’t how she worked, but from what she’d researched on him, he’d stacked them up like collectibles. Her stomach twisted into a tight knot. She couldn’t speak for Dawson, or how they did things at the City Police Department, but down here, at Tillamook’s Sherriff’s Department she was driven with a blazing zeal to take her cases one step farther and avenge the victims.

  If only someone had done the same when for her… Steeling herself, Rachel resisted the urge to wander the dark trenches of memory lane. She couldn’t do that to herself. She knew what those memories would do to her.

  “I’m not getting nervous.” She forced through gritted teeth, an edge to her tone.

  A jerk and a lurch and gradually, they rose a floor, her heart suspended in place, her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t nervous, she was jittery, excited… at least that’s what she wanted to believe. This was her anticipation. It had been a while since her adrenaline had been injected into her veins in this manner.

  She gave her reflection a once over.

  His scent was loud amidst the calm, a seductive woody incense-like aroma that mesmerized her. She was tempted to inquire into the occasion that warranted such a fragrance, she’d bit her tongue on that.

  The doors parted and Dawson led the way towards Evidence Technician Steve Woods's office. It was three doors down from the lady’s restroom at the end of a hallway bustling with Uniforms. He’d maneuvered it as if he’d it was his place of work.

  At the closed cedar door, he’d knocked, twice before letting them in.

  Steve was a man average in height with skin a marshmallow hue, with reflective eyes that seemed to change in the sun. Rachel Olson’s eyes had glimmered in recognition of a colleague she hadn’t worked with in too long a while. He'd claimed time and time again that his eyes were hazel, but Rachel had been determined to refer to them as reflective eyes, there was nothing he could say to convince her.

  Steve had been by a drawer near the window at the other end of the room when both Detective’s had strolled in. He hadn't looked up at them but acknowledged the presence. “Help yourself to a seat,” He'd said, shutting the top drawer and tugging open a bottom one.

  Dawson had learned his weight on the egg-shell drywall by the door. Detective Olson had taken up a seat by the scatter-brained man’s desk.

  “Detective Olson, Detective Dawson, I didn't expect to see either of you here this early, what seems to be the problem?” Steve Woods said shutting the bottom drawer and, in his hands, sat a folder and a pen. “Olson, were you able to speak with the Sherriff?”

  “Not exactly but—”

  “I was, and I was able to pick up a bit about our Jane Doe." Detective Dawson snatched the conversation.

  Steve Woods made his way to his table but didn't sit.

  "Care to share?" He tipped his head. Steve leaned against the surface.

  "She goes by the name Blake Campbell. Died in her late fifties, anti-social from the looks of things, but I can't be so sure... She was apparently trapped in her first marriage; I’m guessing it was a master-servant kind of thing and not in the kinky way we’re all thinking.” Dawson rambled earning an appreciative stare from Olson. “Long story short, she was wedged between love and freedom.” Steve Woods from what Rachel could tell seemed uninterested. The thought rumbled in her stomach; her palms clammy. She needed her team infected with the fervor that Dawson had caught from her. Nevertheless, a bulb glimmered in her head.

  “Was the deceased’s phone taken into evidence?” She pitched.

  Steve ought to have come across Blake Campbell's phone while at the scene. It didn’t seem likely she would have had one during her marriage with Christopher Campbell, but she ought to have gotten her hands on one after his passing.

  Rachel needed access to that.

  “I am actually not sure. I had a few of the guys down at the scene bag everything and log it as evidence and I am yet to sort through them.” Steve Woods had responded. He'd tapped the surface of his desk.

  “Okay, well—”

  “Really man, a whole evidence technician hasn’t sorted through the evidence collected from the scene?” Detective Dawson wasn’t satisfied.

  “What do you want from me man?” He straightened and went around his desk to his chair. “I haven’t found the time,”

  “We’ve got an investigation, Woods, we need your findings to move forward, and I have a feeling you have something for us, you just haven’t gone through it on your own yet.”

  “Dawson leave it, he has his process,” Rachel reprimanded. He could egg his team at the City P.D., but that wasn’t how her people worked, they worked on their own time and she respected it as far as it worked in line with her time.

  “I’m not disputing the fact that he has his process. He has his, I have mine and you, have yours. I am just speaking to him, man to man. And he knows that, that phone is somewhere within reach and if he can just hand it to us, we can be on our way.”

  Steve seemed unsettled. Rachel detested that.

  What kind of leader was she if she didn’t carry her team along?

  Steve reached into his pockets and retrieved a small key; with it, he’d bent beneath his table and unlocked a drawer. A Ziplock was pulled from it and handed to Detective Olson. “Whatever you find on there, I haven’t had the time to go through so it’s not going to be in the report.”

  She shook her head. “Report the finding of a phone belonging to the deceased, that’ll do.”

  “Great job, Woods. And don’t look so glum, hey,” Dawson pushed himself off the wall and approached the table. “A bunch of us on the CSI team are heading downtown for some beers, you can drown your sorrows in a chilled bottle of Budweiser. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a solid deal.”

  “I’ll sleep on it.” Steve Woods said.

  “Since that’s behind us, I actually came here to find out if bloody clothes were uncovered from the scene?" She leaped to the chase.

  "Now that you've mentioned it, yes. I was about recording our findings so far a
nd reporting everything to you," She cocked her head. So, blood-stained clothes had been uncovered from the vicinity and Steve Woods hadn't thought to run to her or Dawson with it? Those clothes could be the secret to uncovering their killer.

  "And? What kind of clothes were found in the area?" Steve Woods's shoulders fell.

  She'd taken the elevators up a floor and hurried, forking left by a row of chairs perched outside the Sherriff's office. Her office was two doors down to the left.

  It was guarded.

  The man who'd planted himself in wait was unfamiliar to her. Dark in ways that had her blood rushing into her ears. He had these angry eyes canopied by thick untrimmed eyebrows that kicked her fight or flight instinct into full gear. Where was Dawson when she needed him? The man’s lips chapped had been pressed in a thin line. Her gut tightened; pulse pounding in her wrists and fingers curled in a fist. But what did she have to tremble for? She was in the Sherriff's Department, there were cameras strategically positioned outside her office... A girl can never be too careful... She thought to herself.

  She wore a plastic smile, greeting; "Good morning, Sir, I'm Detective Olson, how may I help you?" She'd asked rummaging through her pocket for her keys. She'd grabbed it out of Betty— her snow-white 2018 Lexus Sedan—before coming in... She couldn't have forgotten it... could she? Somehow, the thought of returning to the safety of her car eased the panic that sat in wait. Her fingers pressed against a cool sharp metal, she'd had it in her blazer pocket, her left pocket. She'd thrown the door open in a surge of disappointment and… fear? Her heart had sunk. Regret rained over her and she didn't have an umbrella. She couldn’t shake the trapped feeling when the man joined her in her office, the suffocating feeling as though she were all of a sudden claustrophobic.

  Whoever this man was, if he intended to make her the topic of the morning news, she would have nowhere to run… No scratch that, she had a window… She hoped in the depth of her erratic heart that it didn’t come to that.

  "How may I help you?" She asked again, this time daring to approach her table, resuming her position behind her desk.

  In a splinter of a second, she was slumped over her desk in a crimson pool of her own making, eyes white, blank in a dead stare, jaw slaked as blood drooled. There was grotesque damage to her swollen-purplish skin. She bit back a scream, her office, familiar, whirling before her eyes.

  She offered the grim man a seat at the other side of her desk. He obliged.

  Clearing his throat and meeting her dead in the eye, the man asked; “What happened to my mother?” His anger sizzled like hot oil. Rachel tapped her spaghetti fingers on the table. She wasn't nervous… she told herself, she was listening, old habits die hard.

  “And who exactly is your mother, and have you filed a missing person's report?” Rachel reached for a pen and a record book she'd shoved in her drawer. She stifled a yawn. Turning into work before the crack of dawn would do that to a person.

  She reached for her desktop computer, turning it on.

  “Blake Campbell.” The tightness in Rachel Olson's gut had returned. He was the son of the woman in the crimson-stained threadbare wedding dress.

  Go figure…

  “She was my mother. She was an antique store owner and… and I had to get down here from Portland the moment I heard that she was murdered in our family home?” Rachel felt for him.

  Blake Campbell had been a mother.

  Someone had killed her; someone had deprived a helpless son of his mother.

  There was a fierce frustration in her belly; it burned like a thousand storms.

  She was going to get to the root of this.

  Because someone had done something similar to her mother, and she’d wanted to know who. She’d wanted to see the culprit rotting away in a cell, plagued with his own regret. She hadn’t gotten the opportunity.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen this time.

  When she’d lost her mother in 2010, she’d been devastated despite the apparent causes. The hospital had ruled it as a casualty, she’d passed away in her sleep during her recovery. She’d succumbed to her injuries. Her heart had stopped. Why then had the authorities overlooked their home that had been broken into, why had no one acknowledged the rooms that had been ransacked? Why then didn’t they give much thought to the goddamn bullet holes? Rachel had built a story, linked it to two killers but had come up empty-handed. How wouldn’t she, she hadn’t had the backing of the police at the time. And when she’d joined the force, she’d made sure families of murder victims wouldn’t go through what she’d endured. Rachel hadn’t quite gotten over the loss till her ex-husband Mathew had come along. He’d been a shoulder, a lover…A sweet flame in her world of ashes.

  "Calm down sir," Rachel said just out of protocol. An outburst would do nothing to get her closer to finding whoever had killed Mrs. Campbell. "Mr. Campbell, I would like to implore you bear with us, we are just as startled as you and we are working tirelessly to get to the bottom of this situation." They were, and she would pull some strings, she would see if she could get things to move a little faster than they were. That was Dawson’s strong suit, and she was going to play on that.

  She didn't know why she felt compelled to do so, but she did.

  She wanted to know more about the Campbell family, there must be something in their family history that could lead her to their killer, and Mr. Campbell was going to be her ticket to finding out who this alleged killer could be.

  "What, you want me to be satisfied with that generic response?" He leaned forward in his seat. She drank him in. He was handsome to say the least, not that she was on the market no. She was a career woman married to her job. That didn't mean she couldn't sprinkle compliments where they were due. With slender eyes of a blue-green hue, his eyes reminded her of spring break in college, of trips she would sneak out to with friends. He had a chiseled jaw; sharp, a contrast to cheeks she felt she could reach out to pinch. Whoever his father had been, he ought to have been quite the looker. "From what I hear, she was stabbed in her bedroom?" Rachel nodded solemnly.

  She’d been at the scene earlier on. She’d been with the deceased. She’d been a first responder.

  "Mr. Campbell, your mother didn't deserve that. No one deserves to pass away like that. It's quite unfortunate."

  "Unfortunate?!" He rapidly rose to his feet. The chair in her office falling backward in shock, the noise causing a rippling effect on Rachel who’d exploded in a coughing fit, a shriek lodged in her throat, a white chill gripping her fingers and toes. “Unfortunate is what you say to a person whose car was stolen overnight, unfortunate is losing my keys and not having access to my house! Unfortunate doesn't cover my mother being stabbed to death in our family home. I mean we spent Christmas there!” She composed herself. “We had dinner that she prepared! She's never been a good cook, but she tried her best and we still stomached it, and now I'm hearing someone killed her out of cold blood and you want me to bear with you? Bullshit!" Mr. Campbell flared his hands over his head. She’d held his gaze in hers, apologetic eyes beckoning him to cool his temper. He was blind to her efforts.

  He turned and strode towards the door. He paused turning to look back at her. "I want that killer caught before the end of the week or I'm taking matters into my own hands."

  Clark Finn had been in a better mood when Rachel Olson had wandered down to the morgue. It was a fair distance from her office. It wasn't below the ground floor as she'd initially expected when she’d found herself on the force... Time and time again she’d wandered down two floors in search of the morgue. Time and time again she’d come across Crime Scene Technician, Janice Lee’s office.

  The morgue at Tillamook County's Sherriff's department was in a separate building towards the parking lot in the west wing of the lot. She'd had to yet again, duck her head from the grinning sun and scuttle towards the building that nearly mirrored the main building, only this didn't have the grime-filled windows that mentally triggered her gag reflexes. She
hadn't made her way to the morgue during Leona Wendy, her last victim's murder investigation. No, everything had been reported to her. At the time she didn't have a frantic son on her neck threatening to take matters into his own hands if something wasn't done and done fast.

  Of course, Leona Wendy had her parents, seeking justice for their little girl, but they hadn't resulted to threats. Mr. Campbell had, and Rachel Olson didn't want to know what he meant by taking matters into his own hands.

  Blue-grey ran up the walls, it was a properly lit foyer, chairs lining either side by the door. A front desk had been occupied by two women, one of whom had been on the phone, features scrunched. Detective Olson with her hands in her pockets met the women by their desk. It had been pressed against a wall, on the left a door, unmarked.

  She turned away from it, her lips pressed in a thin line.

  “I’m here for…” Her words caught in her throat when those doors barged open and Forensics pathologist Jeffery Mariana rushed through looking in need of the morning sun. Not only had the honey skinned man been scowling on his way out, he’d had his fingers curled into a fist as if he’d just stumbled on rather displeasing news…

  She was tempted.

  A minute with him, or with Medical Examiner Clark Finn?

  He was already through the doors before she could decide.

  She was left with Finn.

  She was directed through the unmarked door, down a flight of stairs to the laboratory.

  Clark Finn hadn't smiled up at her when she'd turned the corner to where he'd been seated by the body. Nothing like that, though he hadn't groaned or scowled in her presence, and Rachel was going to take that as a win. Clark Finn hadn’t been alone, overlooking the body, he’d already been occupied by Detective Dawson.

  Both men had looked up at her, only Dawson had held her stare, Clark had returned his attention to the half-naked cadaver before him. Head to toe, he had been clothed in scrubs, gloves, and a surgical mask. Rachel wasn't new to the morgue setting, and yet the chill never seemed to get old. The temperature was below average to preserve the corpses. People that once roamed the earth going about their day had been reduced to mere remains. She reeked of empathy. Though she wasn't the only foul stench. She couldn't seem to overlook the medical smell, the embalming chemicals that swirled in the air. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.