Not Forgotten

by George Lee Miller

  “That’s a Moscow mule,” Skeeter said, sounding full of himself.

  “Like you would know,” I said. “You don’t drink.”

  “I had one last week for a special occasion. Vodka, ginger beer, and a twist of lime. Very refreshing.”

  “You had a date?”

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “’Cause you haven’t had a date since last October.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I set it up.”

  “She still calls me.”

  “That’s because you installed her security system. Who was your date with?”

  “I took my mom to Applebee’s for her birthday,” he said. He was a good son.

  We watched Marissa and Beth sip their drinks and search the crowd. A guy in a skin-tight silver T-shirt waved his rainbow-colored Mohawk at them like a preening peacock. The girls looked at each other and giggled as the Mohawk pranced in front of them before making his approach. He hopped from one foot to the other and gestured toward the crowded dance floor. Like a bird in the wild, he was committed to the mating ritual. The girls shook their heads. Mohawk persisted. He inserted himself between them and ordered a drink. When he turned, he brushed his hand across Marissa’s breast. She grabbed the thumb on his right hand and twisted it up behind his back. Mohawk looked shocked and in pain. He backed away and left the girls alone. I ruled him out as a suspect. Marissa would have kicked his ass.

  I was beginning to like Marissa. I wondered where she had learned that move. At the same time, of course, I realized she was dead. Whatever training she had wasn’t enough to prevent her death. That told me the killer was persistent and brutal, and made me even more determined to catch him.

  The girls continued to watch the crowd and giggle. They looked young and innocent and full of life. I wanted to shout “Go home!” at the screen. But, of course, Skeeter and I could only watch the inevitable. It was like seeing a video of a train wreck before an accident, the passengers were all happy and clueless that death was rushing to meet them.

  They left their drinks on the bar and went to the dance floor. Not a good thing to do in a place like this. We watched the drinks for any sign of tampering but only saw the barmaid in the white lipstick sweep them into the sink.

  By eleven thirty on the video time stamp, the Fourth of July crowd was double what I had experienced. Just watching it made my ears ring. There was still no sign of Danny Allison. It was four a.m. Sam had lost interest when the pizza ran out and went to sleep in the kitchen.

  I put on a pot of coffee. Skeeter and I were taking turns concentrating on the crowd. When there was enough caffeinated liquid accumulated in the pot, I siphoned it off into my mug and took a drink. It contained the double shot of wake-up that I needed.

  Finally, at eleven forty-seven, Danny showed up. He wore designer jeans and square-toed cowboy boots. He had on a white Oxford shirt tucked into a western belt. He took a look around as if he’d walked into the wrong party, then waded into the crowd and headed for the bar. He didn’t wait for people to move. If they didn’t step aside, he gave them a persuasive shove. More than a few didn’t seem to like being pushed. One young woman gave him the finger. Danny didn’t notice. He never even looked back.

  I searched the other cameras but couldn’t find Marissa. “Where is she?” I asked Skeeter.

  “In the restroom.”

  “You didn’t put a camera in the ladies’ room?”

  He didn’t dignify that with an answer. Even the idea irritated him. He once used his hacking skills to take down a porn site that used public restroom footage.

  Danny ordered a drink and leaned against the bar like a cowboy in a Gene Autry movie, fresh off the trail and looking for some action. We spotted Marissa exiting the restroom alone.

  “Where’s the friend?” I asked.

  Skeeter shrugged. Marissa went straight to the bar. She obviously recognized Danny and approached him directly. When he saw her, he pushed away from the bar and reached to hug her. She held up her hands to stop him. Without the sound, it was impossible to judge their conversation, but she wasn’t happy, and it looked like Danny was making up an excuse for being late. I recognized the body language because I had done it a few times. It was some version of: Sorry, honey, there was a lot of traffic, or I had to work late.

  Danny reached into his perfectly ironed shirt pocket and brought out his ace in the hole. The bracelet. Four grand worth of I’m sorry I’m late. I had Skeeter zoom in, but the lighting was too dim to get a clear picture. I needed her to put it on and hold it up to the light to clearly establish the bracelet as a link between Danny and Marissa.

  The angle didn’t give a great view of her expression, but even from above it looked like her face registered shock. In the next breath she hit him. Hard. She used a flat right hand and caught him on the lower cheek. In the color video, his skin turned crimson. He grabbed her by the wrist. She hit him with the other hand. Good for her. Too bad she hadn’t carried a pistol.

  Danny grabbed both her wrists and pushed them down to her sides. The bouncer at the end of the bar did nothing. What a waste of skin. Her friend was nowhere in sight. The whole encounter lasted less than two minutes. Marissa didn’t struggle after that, and Danny let her go. She took a step back, said one last thing. Danny held up the bracelet in a gesture of surrender. Marissa took it and walked out.

  Danny stayed at the bar and watched her go. She walked out of one camera and into another. Halfway between the bar and the back entrance, she ran into Beth. The two hugged briefly. Marissa wiped her checks with her fingertips, clearly crying. Beth held her hand and seemed to ask pointed questions. Marissa held the bracelet out to Beth. She raised her hands, refusing to take it. Marissa insisted. Beth took the bracelet and put it in her purse. Then Marissa took a step toward the back door. Beth started to follow, but Marissa waved her off.

  “Why did she lie to me?” I said. “Beth obviously saw that Marissa was upset.”

  “Maybe she was too drunk to remember,” Skeeter said.

  “Maybe someone else got to her.”

  “You think Danny threatened her?”

  I didn’t answer. He let the tape roll forward. We watched Danny finish his beer. He didn’t seem too upset. At least, he didn’t smash his head against the bar or stomp his boots on the floor. Ten minutes later he set his empty beer on the bar and walked out the street-side entrance.

  “Didn’t he come in on the other side?” Skeeter asked.

  I nodded and sipped my coffee.

  “You think that was calculated?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “He would have known the place had security cameras,” Skeeter continued.

  I finished my coffee, letting Skeeter blast the air with questions we couldn’t answer.

  “You gonna solve this case or play dumb?”

  I held up my hand. “I’m thinking.”

  “In that case, I’ll just shut the hell up.” Skeeter stalked off toward the kitchen.

  I picked up my spiral notebook and wrote down the time line from the video. The time of Danny’s exit was twelve twenty-eight on the video clock. The time of Marissa’s death was listed between one and three a.m. Danny had plenty of time to walk to the Travis Street bridge, but had they set up a meeting? Did he know which way she would walk? He could have followed her progress from bridge to bridge, waiting for a moment when she was alone.

  If Detective Peterson had seen this, it wasn’t in his report. There was no mention of Danny Allison as a witness or as a suspect. The report didn’t mention a fight. The bracelet was only clear to me because I had held it in my hand. Otherwise, it looked like any other bracelet. Peterson had likely not looked at all the tapes. The question was, Why?

  Skeeter came back into the room. “What now, Sherlock? Do we grab Danny Allison and haul him down to the police station?”

  “No,” I said. “Fighting with your date doesn’t automa
tically lead to murder; otherwise our homicide rate would be like Chicago’s.”

  “But you have the bracelet.”

  “It’s not enough.” I took my empty coffee mug back to the kitchen. “Check on Sam tomorrow, in case I don’t make it back.”

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Lubbock. It’s where Danny and Marissa must have hooked up.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Something going on in Lubbock I don’t know about?”

  “Nothing’s ever going on in Lubbock. Be careful because Danny’s last name is Allison. He’s got more money and connections than AT&T.” I doubted the Allisons were that rich, but I got his point.

  Skeeter took a cab home, and I trudged upstairs. Sam followed me up and jumped on the bed. It was four forty-five. Two nights in a row I was burning the midnight oil. I felt like I was studying for finals, or worse, going out on patrol.

  I thought about calling Sylvia, but it was late and the antihistamine had made me drowsy. That was my excuse anyway. I knew I was putting off the inevitable.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  By the time the sun was hot enough to send shimmering heat waves dancing over the blacktop, I was a hundred miles northwest of San Antonio. Interstate 10, as usual, was bumper to bumper with coast-to-coast truckers and took more attention to drive than I was prepared for on so little sleep. It was kind of like jumping in a stock car and taking a lap around the Talladega racetrack when all I wanted was to go to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. I was glad when I reached the exit for State Highway 83 at Junction and turned north on the narrower and less traveled route. It was a six-hour drive—five and a half if you pushed it—through arid, empty country that was once the sole domain of Comanche Indians following free range buffalo. With the complete demise of the herd and the tribe, there was really nothing to see.

  I stopped in Ballenger for coffee and topped off my gas tank. The restroom smelled like a portable toilet at an outdoor concert, but I didn’t complain. I didn’t want to get the attendant in trouble. She looked like a high school kid who needed the job. The town was close to the famous Permian Basin that had made a good many Texans, including the Allison family, rich from the large oil deposits and still kept a good portion of them employed. The pipeline Grandpa was upset about originated there.

  I was making the drive to find out if Danny and Marissa left any trace of their relationship in their college town. No one seemed to know they were together in San Antonio. The mother was out of the loop, and Marissa’s best friend from high school wasn’t talking. I had contacted Kelly Hoffman, a former Marine officer I’d been stationed with on my last deployment. She worked for the university police force and had agreed to help me out even though it was Sunday.

  When the vast expanse of rolling limestone hills gave way to flat red farmland, I knew I was finally getting close. The town seemed to rise out of the dark-green cotton plants that stretched in neat rows as far as the eye could see. I followed the signs to the university and found an empty parking spot next to the new crime lab building. The one thing Lubbock had was plenty of free parking.

  Kelly had the wholesome good looks of a farmer’s daughter. She was born and raised in the country, five miles south of Lubbock, and had joined the Corps as an MP after getting a degree in forensic science. She still wore her blond hair cut short following the female military standard, and when she met me at the front door, she still looked like she could ace the Marine physical fitness test.

  “Sarge, you scallywag. I wasn’t expecting you till after lunch.” She took off her lab coat and extended her hand.

  I glanced at her new sergeant stripes and name badge. She had traded one uniform for another. She looked good in both. I shook her hand. She didn’t have delicate, long fingers like Sylvia. She was built solid like an athlete. Her hands were calloused from lifting weights and helping her dad on weekends with the farm work. Her nails were painted red but filed down so they didn’t interfere with the instruments she worked with in the lab or the bales of hay she bucked for the livestock.

  “You look like you just got off the obstacle course,” I said.

  “Who says I didn’t?”

  “What’re you working on?”

  She showed me the unit’s new Rapid DNA instruments. They could process DNA samples in two to three hours while a perp was sitting in a jail cell. A process that normally took months now could put a suspect away before he was back out on the streets or clear him before he was locked away.

  I followed her to her office down the hall. She had a collection of Marine Corps paraphernalia on her wall along with a picture of us together on the base in Afghanistan. She sat behind a metal desk and watched me study other pictures of her in uniform at other bases I knew.

  “Make you wish you’d stayed in?” she asked. I detected a hint of longing in her voice.

  “Not me,” I said. “But I was enlisted. It was a whole different Corps than you experienced.”

  “Don’t give me that BS, Sarge. I did everything y’all did, and extra because I was female.” She laughed and seemed to be waiting for me to argue her point.

  I got the feeling she wanted to swap war stories. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and I wondered if her excuse about working on Sunday morning was really true. I didn’t want to hurry her and seem ungrateful, but as much as I was enjoying her company, I was hoping to get some information and hit the road. When the silence stretched for another minute, she sensed my impatience.

  “Let me run Allison’s name in the law enforcement database and see what pops up,” she said, booting up the computer on her desk and accessing the files.

  While we waited, I asked if she liked being back in Lubbock or if she preferred South Texas. She kept her eyes on the screen and didn’t answer. The last time I saw her was when she was stationed in San Antonio. She had called out of the blue, and I met her for a beer. I had just started dating Sylvia at the time.

  “My family’s here,” she finally said. “The job is what I’ve always wanted. This is one of the most sophisticated labs in the country. Last year we got approval for the upgrade by the FBI. We stay busy.” She scrolled through a list of names, then stopped. “I got a hit on your boy.”

  I got up to look, but she blocked my view.

  “I know you told me about this on the phone, but you are on this case, right? The mother hired you to find the killer?” She was a good MP and had transitioned into a by-the-book civilian policewoman. I gave her the details, starting with the bracelet and what Skeeter and I found on the surveillance tapes.

  “She was pregnant,” I said, finishing my explanation. “Everything points to Danny Allison as the father. He didn’t come forward or lift a finger when she died.”

  Kelly’s features hardened. The story definitely left Danny smelling like week-old roadkill. She studied my expression, then nodded, convinced. She turned back to the monitor and read Danny’s record.

  “There was a sexual harassment report filed his sophomore year. The woman was a foreign exchange student from China. She dropped the charge and has since moved back home.”

  “That won’t help,” I said.

  “Here’s another one the following year. The same charge.”

  “Another foreigner?”

  “Nope, this one was a local.”

  “Spread the love.”

  “She dropped the case too.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Not really. Even with the MeToo movement, if the guy’s got money he can hire the best lawyers and private investigators to dig the dirt. Pretty soon the case doesn’t look so good, and the victim gets cold feet or settles out of court.”

  “He does have money and a high-powered lawyer. But not the best private eye.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I’m the best, and I don’t work for him.”

  She smiled. I always liked that smile. Bright, clean, crisp. The kind of smi
le that turned heads even if it was hiding under a helmet. I turned back to the screen. If I stared at her any longer, she might think I was flirting with her. Maybe I was and wasn’t willing to admit it. I didn’t want to complicate my relationship with Sylvia any more than it already was.

  I made notes on the details of the last complaint made against Danny, then offered to buy her lunch. Instead we went to the university cafeteria where she had a punch card. The food reminded me of military meals, which were hard to describe but stuck to your ribs. I was hungry after the long drive, so I took a plate of meatloaf with mac and cheese on the side. I’m sure the coastal universities had a more vegan-friendly menu, but Lubbock was in the heartland and had too many farmer’s kids to be too politically correct. There was a long line waiting for chicken fried steak. Kelly and I met at the iced tea dispenser. I went for the unsweetened.

  “What are you, a yankee?” She laughed. “No one drinks unsweetened tea in the South.”

  “I’m watching my weight,” I said.

  “Don’t say that out loud,” she whispered.

  We filled our trays and sat at a corner table. The sound of clacking silverware and ice being dispensed provided a constant undercurrent to our conversation.

  “How’s your girlfriend, the Victoria Secret model?” she asked.

  “She sold furniture.” I laughed. I knew Sylvia and Kelly would never get along if they were ever to meet.

  “Whatever, I’m surprised she lets you do this kind of work. I thought she wanted you to go back to law school.”

  “If I did what other people wanted, I would have stayed in the Corps.”

  “You’d be a gunny by now.”

  “Or busted back to private.”