The Room Where It Happened

by Jason Letts

  “So nothing then, Mr. Parkinson? No names of anybody? No idea what she’d been up to?” There was no way he’d voluntarily bring up the drugs if he knew, but some insight into her life would help. Kim’s father grumbled and shook his head.

  “You can call me Robert. Kim’s been doing work from home as a phone representative for a bank. She was part of an art group at the community center. I’m not sure what else. She liked to read a lot and had a thing for cashews.”

  “Thank you,” Tera said as he trailed off, glancing at the bedroom. It had become clear that Robert Parkinson was going to be of little value when it came to finding the killer. Keeping him from getting caught in the undertow was her primary concern. Fortunately she had some other ideas about how to get the information she needed and maybe get the investigation to be taken seriously.

  “Robert, if you can give me some space I’m going to call some people in to help. I know this has been a terrible day, and if you want to spend the rest of it with family members while we sort this out, I can get back to you with any news. I’m so sorry again for your loss. She seemed like a great girl,” Tera said.

  He nodded, his head tilted to the side in the direction of the bedroom while his lip quivered. Unexpectedly, he turned back to Tera.

  “Can I just ask you one thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “You look roughly about the same age as Kim. You didn’t happen to…‌know her at all, did you?” he asked.

  “No, never seen her before,” Tera said, offering a sympathetic smile as she extended a hand to lead him back out of the apartment and toward the stairwell.

  No one was perfect, and that included cops. As soon as she was alone, the moment of truth had come to see if she could pull something off to do right by an old friend. Rubbing her eyes, she reached for her phone.

  The best chance for solid answers to this would come from a rape kit, but it needed to happen fast, and she was going to need help from someone with more clout than she had. The only person at work she considered a friend in even the vaguest sense was a forensic mortuary technician by the name of Perry Hicks. Her morbid interest in death had propelled her to spending a substantial amount of time talking to him, but whether he’d go out of his way to help her when he was buried in bodies was something else.

  Eventually she made it through the directory and got him on the phone.

  “Hey Perry, it’s me, Tera. I know it’s late and you’re probably packing it in but I was hoping you could do me a favor.” She clenched her free hand, steeling herself for how he’d respond.

  “A favor? Who’d you kill?”

  “What? I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “I’m just pulling your leg,” Perry said, the sound of his laughter coming through her phone. “But what is it?”

  Tera took a deep breath.

  “I’ve got a DOA here and it’s looking like she was raped and murdered. I’m hoping you could come right over to collect her and start taking a look.”

  She heard a sigh come over the line.

  “One of these days it’d be great to get a look at the vagina on someone who was still living and breathing,” he said, and with no one else alive around Tera was free to smirk.

  “But the thing is if you could send the paperwork straight to me, that’d be great,” she said, her nerves flaring up as she felt herself straying outside of the lines.

  “You?”

  Tera shut her eyes, wondering if that one little question would be all it took to blow her plans. He didn’t need to say it was obvious that handling a murder investigation was above her station, but she was just trying to move it along a little until the right people could solve it. She didn’t care about the credit; she just wanted justice.

  “I’ll be collecting the files on this case until someone can free up the time to take over. You know how busy everyone is,” she said, knowing that claiming everyone was busy was largely indisputable and left little room for argument.

  “I see…”

  He wasn’t buying it that she was stretching her authority, and she was running out of moves other than to come clean.

  “Perry, I don’t want this one to get lost and buried,” she said, very nearly pleading and definitely making it clear that she had a personal stake in it. “Can you help?”

  A pause followed that had her teeth grinding. Most of the lessons she’d learned revolved around police work depending on who you knew and what they would do for you, and it was starting to look like she didn’t have much of either and maybe never would. Maybe it was stupid of her to think that she could chart her own path to finding Kim’s killer. Perry finally broke the silence.

  “Alright, sure. I can come right away. The city won’t mind if I take a little more overtime,” he said, and Tera felt a wave of relief wash over her.

  “Thank you so much. I mean it,” she said, ending the call after giving him the location. Despite grinning ear to ear, she still felt on edge about how talking with Perry went. It was only a matter of time before this came up with someone who wasn’t as inclined to go along with her, and if she couldn’t get through it better than she did with Perry there was no telling what they might think of her poking around in a case she wasn’t assigned to.

  While she waited for the forensic truck to come, Tera went back to the bedroom and took a closer look at the dime bags of coke, which didn’t have any identifying markings or other clues about where they came from or what they were for. She moved on to anything else that would be useful, like a diary, notes, or any texts that might hint at when this happened or who was around, and ended up finding a sizable wad of cash, possibly close to a thousand dollars wrapped tightly in a rubber band that had no apparent explanation. Drug money? Kim’s life savings? She left that in the drawer but thought again how money floating around put the family’s assistance at risk.

  It took using Kim’s thumb to pass the fingerprint scanner on her phone, and Tera quickly adjusted the settings so that it would remain unlocked. A quick flip through proved inconclusive, and she’d need to keep looking later. She slipped the phone in her pocket and went ahead and grabbed Kim’s key to her apartment.

  By the time she shuffled down the stairs to the ground floor, Perry was rolling up right in front of the door. The gangly man with glasses took a wary look around before getting out of the car with an assistant tech, but the only other person around was Kim’s father, who was leaning against the apartment building’s stoop.

  Tera watched the pair from the truck carry a stretcher into the building and directed them upstairs to the proper apartment, where Perry went ahead and began preparing the body to be placed in a bag so that it could be transported back to the lab. When the zipper slid up over her dead friend’s face, Tera held her breath as if she herself was being stuffed in the bag.

  “My first thought is that this looks clean, almost professional. I don’t know who this girl was mixed up with, but she sure didn’t see this coming,” Perry said.

  “We have to find out,” Tera said. Perry shook his head, and she imagined him wondering what he’d do with another body.

  “I’ll let you know what comes back after she gets put through the lab. We’ll get to it as soon as I can, but no promises.”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Tera said, reaching up to put a hand on his shoulder. Maybe she’d bake him some cookies as a thank you and then go on bribing her coworkers to help her with baked goods until they found the killer and people started calling her the cookie cop. Whatever worked…

  Carrying the stretcher with Kim’s body on it didn’t seem to strain them too much, and Tera had the soiled bedsheet balled up in her hands with the intent to toss it in the dumpster outside. Sheets were miserable for finding fingerprints anyway.

  Outside, Kim’s father stayed long enough to watch the truck rattle its way down the road before nodding to her sadly and getting into his hatchback car to drift into the darkness out of sight. Tera noticed how still and quiet the air was, and she had
another moment to reflect on the path she was setting down. She’d watched people solve murders but never before had taken the initiative on figuring out what had happened in one.

  Without any clue what would turn up when she started digging into Kim’s life, the only way forward was the one she’d always taken. Fight hard and never give in. She was fired up.

  It had been hours since she’d left Johnny Rittigen, and when she returned to the squad car it looked like he was wrapping up an episode of House of Cards and barely even noticed when she walked over until she tapped on the window with her knuckles. It was getting on time for them to return to the station anyway.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked, and Tera extended a hand to the street and shrugged at him. “You could’ve walked all the way to the Egg in that time.”

  But thankfully Johnny wasn’t prone to caring much or asking too many questions, and at the moment he seemed too tired to bother making another pass at her as well. As far as kickstarting a murder investigation went, having a docile partner definitely seemed to be a plus. Now if only everything else rolled over for her as easily as he did.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tera bristled at the sight of Olivia’s thong imprinted against the back of her pants as she was unsubtly hanging out at the precinct’s coffee counter not far from the desks like she was asking to be picked up at the bar at midnight.

  Shaking her head, Tera tried to continue searching through Kim’s phone at the beginning of her shift the next day, but she found it difficult to concentrate with that view such a short distance from her desk. Had Olivia specifically requested that the pants to her uniform be two sizes too small in order to achieve that effect?

  Deliberately shifting her seat away from Olivia and her blonde curls, Tera was about to dive back into Kim’s texts when she discovered that Lieutenant Sanders was steps away from reaching her and she’d inadvertently turned right to him.

  “Playing on your phone, Officer?” Sanders said. His deep voice had a way of carrying around the floor, and more than once she’d enjoyed listening in on him chewing someone out for something or other. But considering the stern look on his face as it bore down on her she’d never be able to take any pleasure in that again.

  “No, Lieutenant. This isn’t mine. I was just…” She shut her mouth, realizing it was better to accept the temporary castigation of appearing to fool around with her phone at work rather than get too many questions about how the things she was working on weren’t exactly what she was supposed to be working on. She set down the phone and rose from her seat.

  Lieutenant Sanders was a bull of a man and a stickler for the rules. The only things thicker than his black hair were his arms. For a second Tera was sure he’d gotten wind of the body from Perry and was going to go ballistic about what she thought she was doing handling that alone. Telling him she was just getting it ready to hand off might not carry much weight.

  “I was looking through your logs from last night, Tera, and they’re basically blank. What exactly were you doing with your time?” He was kinder than she thought he’d be. More disappointed than angry. She couldn’t help but glance in Johnny’s direction. What stories had he concocted on his logs that made hers seem sparse?

  “It was a quiet night,” she said, and when Sanders started vigorously shaking his head she knew she’d made a mistake.

  “This is south side Chicago at the beginning of June. We don’t have quiet nights around here. Now, come on. This isn’t your first day and you asked for this. If you want to do traffic with Olivia, let me know. Otherwise, you need to step up.”

  Tera’s eyes widened in alarm and a dreadful vision passed over her eyes of standing next to Olivia as she attempted to flirt shamelessly with any vehicle that had a single male occupant. It was a bit ironic considering stepping up and getting more done was exactly what she was trying to do.

  “No! I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again,” she said. To her surprise, the apology and the promise wasn’t enough to satisfy Sanders, who instead only got closer and glared in her face harder. The discomfort grew and she could only imagine what he’d do if he found out she tried to shield her friend’s family from a messy investigation.

  “I promise,” Tera added. Sanders backed away slowly, not even with a nod to show he’d comprehended her words, his eyes still glaring at her. Getting caught out in the open was fatal, because no one could pretend they didn’t see, which was why everyone took such pains to keep their personal endeavors secret.

  Once Sanders had distanced himself a little more, Tera took a deep breath and vowed to herself to make sure she didn’t attract any more attention like that. It wasn’t going to be easy juggling her normal work with her pursuit of Kim’s killer, but she had to find a way to handle both. But it turned out it wouldn’t be long before Sanders required more of her attention.

  Shortly before she was scheduled to head back out on the streets with Johnny, Tera lifted her head at some commotion by the door as Sanders and a number of other men entered. Most were officers of various rank that she was familiar with from around the precinct, but one new guy in a black suit with a blue dress shirt and red tie stretching over a taut torso got her attention. His short, light-brown hair had some bangs to it in the front, and his dimpled face looked naturally ready to break into an alluring smile at a moment’s notice.

  Sanders cupped his hands to his mouth to be heard across the sprawling room.

  “Your attention please, everybody. I’ve got an announcement to make. I’m very pleased to share that Detective Brady Lance will be joining us here, and we’re lucky to have him. I didn’t know Yale had a Criminal Justice program until he said that’s where he studied. Anyway, we may be looking at our future Chief of Police someday, but for right now we could certainly use the help with our investigative division. I hope everyone’ll give him a hand and a welcoming greeting!”

  The new detective graciously raised a hand as everyone offered him some applause. Tera was optimistic. Some new hires could definitely change things in terms of the devastating volume of unattended cases lurking around the precinct. She got up with everyone else and joined the line to meet him.

  The line moved as the detective processed one perfunctory greeting after another, and Tera figured she’d barely need to touch his hand before she could get back to her desk and prepare to head out, but when they shook hands she couldn’t help but look up at him. To her surprise, he was looking right at her with an easy but confident expression on his face. She was drawn in.

  “I’m Tera Caldera,” she said. “So what did they teach you at Yale?”

  “To never give up,” he replied instantly. It sounded like an expensive lesson but a good one to have deeply ingrained.

  “I like that. Glad to have you with us,” she said with a comfortable smile.

  Halfway back to her desk, she glanced over her shoulder with the sensation that there was something about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was his brown eyes or his mouth, but Detective Brady Lance had an air about him that sent the gears in her head churning.

  By the time she’d returned to her desk, she’d dismissed it as nothing and went ahead getting herself together so that she could hit the streets. She needed more time to gather the supplies for fingerprinting, but thanks to her personal history with Kim she had an even better way to try to find out what was going on in her life.

  Before she left, Johnny had given her an excuse about some bad fish to explain why he wasn’t going to be joining her in the squad car tonight. That would give her more flexibility about how she spent her time between responding to calls.

  Sitting in the squad car with Kim’s phone, she this time went to the contacts and started flipping through to see who might be in there that she could reasonably contact to ask about Kim. The girl had about half their class in there, most of whom Tera would rather die than talk to, and about at least a thousand contacts overall. If the killer was in here, it would take forever to
find the needle in this haystack.

  But one name did stick out to her as a good one to follow up on, and, even though it was a bit sneaky, with Kim’s phone she had a handy way to reach out that wouldn’t look like it was from some unknown spam number. When Tera asked Kendra Jenkins where she was, an answer came through right away.

  Their old classmate was watching her younger brother compete at the skate park by the basketball courts, a jungle of concrete, steel, and chainlink fencing that existed underneath a highway overpass. Although Tera didn’t skate or play basketball—swimming had always been more of her thing—she’d spent enough time at Duggan’s Park to know every inch of it by heart.

  She threw the squad car in drive and took off, not even needing to check the GPS about how to get there. As usual, the place was heavily populated, even on a weeknight, and Tera parked a fair distance away. But her precautions about rousing suspicion didn’t stop there. She kept her own jacket on in an attempt to avoid any repercussions about being immediately pegged as a cop in a place like this.

  The sounds of grinding, scraping, and rolling echoed in every direction amidst the constant flow of traffic whipping by above. It took some time looking through the crowd, but eventually she spotted Kendra and her cornrows woven into a big ball in the back of her head.

  “Hey, Kendra,” Tera said, tapping her on the back of the shoulder and mustering a smile. When she turned around, the look of dismay on her face was off-putting. Whether it was the jacket or the smile, something wasn’t pulling its weight to make this old acquaintance happy to see her. If Tera and Kim had just been friends who occasionally met up, Tera and Kendra were basically just two people who knew of each other.

  “Is that you, Tera?” Kendra asked, wide-eyed. “I guess I’ve never known anyone who was an actual police officer before.”