by T. L. Haddix
“If you change your mind, just let me know.” They started out of the room. Charlie stopped them, indicating the side door to the kitchen. “You might want to go out this door instead. The dining room’s probably full by now, and half the people out there are probably Brown Bag customers. If they see you, it’ll take an hour for you to get out of here.”
With a grimace, they complied. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she told him. “Thanks again.”
As they came into the kitchen, Rita scowled, turned her back, and walked away. Joely rolled her eyes and walked over to them.
“Fricking drama queen. Sorry about that. Sonny said to tell you there’s no charge for today’s lunch. No arguments. He was very, very insistent.”
Charlie smiled. “Okay. Tell him thanks for us?”
“Sure, but answer something for me.” She moved in close and lowered her voice. “What’d you do to Rita? She’s been in a snit ever since she came out of the banquet room the last time.”
Charlie straightened up, shooting a snickering David an exasperated look. “Not a damned thing.” Ruffling Joely’s hair, he thanked her again and they headed for the parking lot.
“Are you going to swing by and visit with Ava for a little while?” Lauren asked David. “She’s at Mrs. Zollman’s.”
“I’d like to. I’m actually off the clock today, so I don’t have to head back for a little while.” He shook Charlie’s hand.
“Let me know if you need anything further.”
David assured him that he would. “I really appreciate you helping with this. It’d be slow going without these files.” He gave Lauren a hug and walked to his car. Charlie moved closer to her as they watched him drive away.
“He seems like a pretty decent guy.”
She smiled. “He is. I’m glad we were able to rebuild our friendship. I think it makes being Ava’s parents so much easier. What’re your plans for the rest of the day?”
“I don’t know, really. I thought I’d head to the library, and then I probably should get home and do some work. Somebody’s gotta make the money to pay the bills, and since my cat doesn’t seem interested… What about you?”
“After I meet that contractor, I’ll probably go home and work on paperwork, laundry, dishes. You know, the normal stuff.”
“Are you okay? I dumped a lot of stuff on you in there just now.”
She looked across the parking lot at the river. “I am. I just need a little while to absorb it all.”
“Okay. Just call me if you need to talk, or anything.”
“I’m taking Ava to Mom and Dad’s this evening. Maybe I’ll see you there?”
“Maybe.” His eyes warm, he touched her face with a tentative hand. Carefully, he brushed her lips with his. He let his mouth linger a little before he drew back, eyes closed. With a deep breath, he opened his eyes.
“I might drop by this evening, see what Win and Molly are up to. Yeah, the more I think about it, that sounds like a good idea. Don’t you think?”
Lauren smiled. “I’ve heard worse. I’ll see you later.” As she drove home, she realized she was still smiling. After the day she’d had, that was surprising and more than a bit telling.
Chapter Twenty-One
Raven Lynch was worried. It was after ten o’clock and his boss, Charity Vaughn, still hadn’t come downstairs. He’d gone ahead and, with Cara’s help, opened for business, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
“I’m going to go check on her. You have things under control down here?”
Cara smiled as two customers walked through the door. “Of course, just hurry back.” She moved to greet the new arrivals, and Raven hurried through the door that led into the back of the gallery. He stopped by the office first. Unlocking the safe drawer in her desk, he grabbed the key to her apartment. He didn’t like going into her apartment without her permission, but his instincts were screaming that something was wrong.
Since the key unlocked the outside entrance to the apartment, he headed out to the small garden area between the building and the parking lot. On the few occasions she hadn’t been available to do it herself, she’d had him escort repairmen upstairs. Though there was an entrance to her apartment from inside the building, Charity was the only one with access to that door.
“I’d prefer to not bring them through the gallery. No one else needs to know about the private entrance.” There had been a strange emotion on her face when she’d told him that, something Raven was at a loss to interpret, but the look had left him cold.
When he reached the third-floor entrance, he frowned. The windows were closed, the shades drawn, and the place looked deserted. Turning, he looked back at the employee parking area. Sure enough, Charity’s little red convertible was in its spot. A sense of foreboding washed over him, and his hand shook when he rang the doorbell.
Charity had given him a chance when no one else in town would touch him with a ten foot pole. She’d seen something in him and welcomed him into the Gallery with open arms. Being openly gay in a conservative community like Leroy wasn’t easy, though it was better now than it had been when he was growing up. He felt that the acceptance he experienced now was thanks in large part to her generosity and kindness.
“Oh, dear God, please let her be alright.” Since the doorbell had gone unanswered, he opened the storm door to knock on the steel interior door. “Come on, Charity, open the damned door.”
After a couple minutes of persistent knocking, when there was still no answer, he closed his eyes. Saying a prayer he hadn’t known he still remembered, he used the key.
The heavy door swung open and a wave of fetid air rushed out, making him gag. The odor was sickly sweet, pungent with the metallic tang of copper and decomposition. With all the shades drawn, the apartment was very dark. Still standing in the door, he was afraid to cross the threshold. He groped along the interior wall for the light switch. When the lights came on, all he could do was stare. His field of vision started to narrow and adrenaline kicked in, sending his heart racing and nausea roiling through him. He took a deep breath, and then he screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The body splayed out spread eagle on the floor. Blood pooled around it, covering every surface within ten feet of the dead woman. The spatter that spread up the wall behind her and across the ceiling was extensive.
Detective Stacy Kirchner crossed her arms and stood back to watch as the crime scene unit techs processed the apartment. Harvey Stapleton, the coroner, was bent over the body, studying it closely, and she wondered how he could stand the stench at such a short distance. With a groan, he got to his feet. Pressing his hands against his back, he walked stiffly to where she stood.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked, tapping the fingers of one hand against her arm.
He looked at her through the top of his bifocals. “Looks like she was bludgeoned to death. Possible evidence of sexual assault. I’d say she died sometime around midnight last night. It’s hot in here, so that can confuse things a little.” His assistants loaded the body onto a gurney for transport.
“Thanks, Harvey.” She left the apartment and headed back downstairs to talk to the poor guy who’d discovered the body.
Raven sat at a small table in the break room. Joining him, she studied the young man slumped in the chair next to her. He was obviously shaken, and she felt a pang of sympathy. She took in his appearance, from the spiky black hair, pale skin, and pierced ears, to the nails bitten down to the quick.
“Mr. Lynch, I’m Detective Stacy Kirchner. Do you feel like answering some questions?”
He sat up a little straighter. “I think so.”
“We’ll start with the easy stuff,” she assured him. “Tell me what you do here at the gallery, that sort of thing.”
“I’m the assistant manager. Charity’s assistant.” He stumbled over the woman’s name, and Stacy quickly redirected him.
“Is Raven your given name? That’s pretty unusual.”
“My given name is Randall, but I’ve been Raven for a number of years now. I changed it legally.”
“Tell me what happened this morning.”
“I got here about nine, got the gallery ready to open at ten. Cara came in about five minutes after I did. Charity wasn’t here.”
When he hesitated, Stacy gently prodded him. “That was unusual?”
He frowned. “The last couple of days have been unusual. But yes, she typically meets us when we get here. I tried calling her, but there was no answer.”
“And that made you worry?”
“Of course it did, but we needed to get the gallery open. As soon as that was done, I went upstairs. Detective, Charity was… intensely private. After what happened yesterday, I don’t know—I thought she just needed a little time. It wasn’t until she didn’t make it down by ten that I really thought something was wrong.”
“What happened yesterday?”
Raven shifted in his seat. He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the table, drew one out. Though he put it in his mouth, he didn’t light it. “She called me early yesterday morning—probably around eight or so. Told me she was taking the day off, that something personal had come up and she had to go out of town. Told me to handle things here.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it, then at her. “Do you mind if we go outside?”
Stacy stood. “Sure. I’ll follow you.”
Once they were outside, he led her to a small wrought iron table in the corner of the garden. He lit the cigarette, inhaling greedily. “I can’t get the taste out of my mouth,” he told her quietly. “Of the blood.”
“Most people never have to see what you did today. The taste, the smell, it’s something you never get used to. It will eventually fade, though.” She let him get a few more puffs in before continuing the interview. “So, yesterday—do you have any idea what this personal situation was, or where Charity went?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’ll tell you this—unless she was so sick she couldn’t move, she didn’t miss work. Whatever it was, it had to be vitally important.”
“Okay. What about her personal life? Was she seeing anyone?” When he hesitated and lowered his gaze, Stacy felt her intuition kick in. “What is it, Raven?”
He bit his lip and looked at her earnestly. “She had a lot of friends.”
“You mean male friends?”
“I don’t want people to judge her, Detective.”
She looked at her notebook. “I understand.” When she looked up, she saw that he wasn’t convinced. “I do, I promise you.”
After a moment, he continued. “She was a great person—kind and generous. She did a lot of things for people that they never knew, because she didn’t brag about it. But she liked men. She liked a lot of men. Almost to the point where it was a sickness.”
As Stacy absorbed his comments, she realized that their suspect pool had just gotten a lot wider. “Do you know if she was seeing anyone in particular?”
“No. We didn’t talk about our love lives.”
“Did she have anyone she would have talked about that with?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t have girlfriends. Like I said, she guarded her privacy almost religiously, and that extended to having friends.”
“Do you know if Charity had any family?”
“Her attorney might know. Chase Hudson, here in town.”
Writing down Chase’s name, she asked if he could think of anything else.
“Not offhand, no.”
She pulled a business card out of her pocket. “If you think of anything, no matter what, call me.” Standing, she started to walk away, but turned back to him. “Raven, do you have anyone you can call? Anyone you can talk to?”
His smile was sad, but genuine. “Yeah. I do. Thanks for asking.”
When her phone vibrated on her belt, she excused herself. Seeing the lead CSU tech’s name on the screen, she answered.
“Hey, Bert. What’s up?”
“Can you come up to the victim’s apartment? I have some things I need to show you.”
“I’ll be right up.” She stopped at the foot of the stairs and donned new booties before going back up to the blood-stained apartment. Bert was waiting for her, and as she went inside, the stench of old blood assailed her. Swallowing, she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible, waiting for her senses to adjust.
“What do you have?”
He closed the door, shutting them in the darkened apartment, and handed her a pair of protective glasses. “You’ll need these. You know the coffee shop that was vandalized? The Brown Bag?”
Stacy put on the glasses and frowned. “Of course.”
“Well, the place was covered with roofing tar—floors, walls, even some on the ceiling. Guess what we found here?” He pointed to a dark smudge on the hardwood floor just inside the door.
“Roofing tar.” He nodded. “That’s very interesting.”
“Oh, there’s more. Watch this.” Switching on the alternate light source wand, he highlighted a strip of flooring adjacent to the smudge. “It looks to be a man’s boot, about size ten, with a pretty distinctive tread pattern.” He turned off the light and opened the door. Stacy handed him the glasses.
“And it isn’t showing up to the naked eye because it’s what? Blood, tar?”
“Probably a little of both. There are more prints closer to the body, but they’re pretty badly smeared. These are pristine, though.”
“Anything else significant?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “There’s no evidence of a break-in, and she had a state-of-the-art security system. Judging from a couple of other things around the apartment, I’d say she was security conscious to the point of being paranoid. Let me show you.” He escorted her over to the wall dividing the bathroom from the bedroom. “There’s a button on the security system keypad that I didn’t recognize. I pushed it just to see what it would do, and I heard a beeping from around this wall.” He pointed toward the bathroom. “See how the door to the bathroom is set kind of over to the side?”
“Yes.”
He walked her on into the bathroom. “I initially thought it was set so far to the side because the closet door was here,” he indicated. “But when I walked into the closet, the dimensions just didn’t make sense. There’s more depth between the living room and the back of the closet than there should be, you see?”
“So what’s in that space?”
He smiled. “That’s a good question. I did some measurements, and the depth is about thirty-six inches, maybe a little more, after accounting for framing. It runs the length of the bathroom and closet, so it’s about twelve feet long.”
“What are you thinking? Some kind of safe room or something?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. See how these shoe racks have casters?” He pointed to the bottom of the storage cube. “They’ve been moved a lot. The floor in front of them is scuffed in a very consistent pattern, like they swing out.” He moved the rack and revealed a hidden door with a keypad lock.
Stacy whistled. “Did you call anyone to come and look at this lock?”
“Locksmith should be here any minute now. And we’re just about wrapped up in the rest of the apartment.”
They moved back out into the bedroom. “Do you have anything else to show me? I need to call Sheriff Dixon and let him know what’s going on.”
“Not right now, but I’d bet it’s gonna get a whole lot more interesting once we get access to that room.”
~ * * * ~
Two hours later, the mood in the room had shifted. The graveyard humor often found around law enforcement was absent. In its place was a quiet incredulousness. Stacy and Bert stared into the now-open room in the back of the closet. It was a narrow space, dark, but well organized. There were hundreds of bound journals and a small safe. Most shocking was the presence of a video camera mounted on one of the shelves with its lens shooting out through a hidden panel into t
he bedroom on the other side of the wall. Along with the camera were dozens of tapes, nearly a hundred of them, labeled with dates and letters. The camera had a flashing red light, and when Bert opened the camera door, there was a tape inside.
Picking up one of the journals in her gloved hands, Stacy glanced through it. Inside the cover was a range of dates, starting four years earlier. The journal itself was filled with entries, both brief and detailed. Setting it back in its place on the shelf, she picked up another one. It was filled in a similar way, but this one was dated more recently, just two years ago.
“Bert, what’s one of those dates from the tapes? Are there any from a couple years back?”
“Yeah.” He rattled off a date. “Did you find something?”
“Maybe.” Flipping to the journal entry that corresponded to the date, she read for a moment, then gave a low whistle.
“What is it? Something important?”
“You could say that.” Setting aside the journal, she stood. “We need to play back one of those tapes.”
He examined the camera, figuring out how to use its playback features. “Do you want to watch the tape that’s in here?”
“No. Let’s use one of the others. That one’s too important to risk.”
After he’d bagged that tape as evidence, he found the tape from two years ago. “Let’s see what we have.”
“Hang on.” Stepping outside, Stacy went to the front door and hollered down to the deputy at the bottom of the stairs. “Can you make sure no one comes up here for a few minutes?”
“Sure thing, Detective.”
She hurried back to the closet. “Okay. If these tapes contain what I think they do, we don’t need an audience.”
Bert hit play, turning the camera’s view screen so they could see it. The bed popped into view, and the wide angle lens showed some of the living room as well, but not the front door. They could hear the low murmur of voices, and then a couple came into view, shedding clothing as they came near the bed. It was Charity Vaughn and a professional-looking man, and they were very intent on each other.