by Tonya Kappes
“Leighann,” I said as if she could hear me, which she might. I looked over at Poppa. “I’m going to find out exactly what happened.” I promised the young girl then and there. “I want you to know that no daughter deserved the treatment you received.”
I felt it necessary to apologize for her parents. If I’d know about how Sean treated her and Jilly, I’d probably have been more on Leighann’s side during all the calls Sean had placed to the department to bring his daughter home and runaways she’d attempted. I’d certainly have arrested Sean for some sort of domestic violence abuse.
I even found myself mad at Jilly for not stepping up to the plate and being a mother to the poor girl.
“Thank you, Tom.” Max gripped the faxed papers and shook them in the air. “When I did the preliminary toxicology report on Leighann, there were some traces of Ambien in her system.” He pulled out his file and opened it, pointing to all sorts of numbers on a grid that I didn’t even understand.
Tom Geary was the owner of a lab in Clay’s Ferry that I used in the department when I needed something fast.
“Sleeping pills?” I asked, not real sure. I continued to flip through the file to see the notes he’d made in the sidebars.
“Yes. Just a trace. Tom has some real sophisticated equipment that would help detect just exactly how much.” He took the papers off the fax machine and muttered Tom’s report under his breath. “Yep. I knew it.”
“Did Tom confirm?” I wondered.
“He did. Which doesn’t necessarily point to a homicide, but the amount in her system is just enough to put her in a deep sleep and if she was underwater, she wouldn’t wake up.” His eyes bore into my soul.
“Are you saying she didn’t take them?” I asked and looked over at Finn. The color had come back into his face.
“I’m saying that the time of death doesn’t coordinate with how long her body has been under the water.” He beat around the bush.
“She was given the medication before her car went into the river,” Poppa appeared next to Finn and he stood over him. “This boy needs to toughen up.”
“Someone gave her the medication. When she had no control over her body, they put her in the SUV and somehow got it into the water.” I was playing the game with Poppa without Max understanding what I was doing.
“Someone did give it to her, but how did they get the car in park? The SUV can roll if the keys aren’t in it, but how did they get the car in park? Was someone in the car with her?” Poppa posed questions that were so hard to answer.
“Who could lift her into an SUV?” I asked.
“These are questions you’re going to have to find the answers to.” Max made another copy of Tom’s report and stuck it in the file labeled “Sheriff’s File” along with the case number of Leighann Graves. “The water in her lung tissue and the time release of the sleeping pills don’t coordinate. There was some time in between.”
“It’s hard for me to forget the prescription bottle of Ambien for Sean Graves on their kitchen window sill.” There was a light of uneasiness that passed between me and Max.
“Sean can be a bear. I know that. You know that he hangs out with me and some of the guys and plays cards, but I don’t think he could kill that little girl of his. She gave him fits, but he loved her,” Max said.
“He also hit his wife and daughter. Not only that, he also kicked his daughter out of the house, and she had to live in her SUV and got food from the food shelter at church.” It almost made me sick that Max was almost making Sean Graves out to be a great man.
“He never said anything about all that.” Max handed me the file. “I’m not saying he didn’t give some of his sleeping pills to her either or that he did, but I am saying that it appears she had some sleeping pills. Now, whether she took them herself I can’t tell you that, but I do know it’s enough that if she was in a bathtub and went under, she’d not wake up.”
I wasn’t asking Max to do my job. I knew that he could only give me the facts based on what Leighann’s body was telling him. It was now on my hands to take what her body had said along with the evidence I was collecting to arrest a suspect.
“Now, I don’t know about what you found in the SUV, but I’m positive she didn’t have time to put the keys in her pocket from the time of death to the length of time she was in the water.”
“She was murdered,” I said it out loud and declared it right there.
“I’ll be out here.” Finn got our attention and he pushed out the door.
“I’m sorry this has happened right here at Christmas. It seems the holiday season doesn’t stop death from coming. I’m so busy, I feel like a spec of water in a hot skillet.” Max untied the white apron from around his waist and threw it in the clothing basket and motioned for me to come to his office.
“I’d heard last night that you were full.” I waited for him to get the paperwork together that I had to sign off on.
“Yep. Alright. I’m going to say this was a homicide because I just can’t make the timeline work.” He turned the piece of paper towards me and pushed it across the desk. “Sign right here.”
I took one of the many pens from his pen cup and signed exactly where he told me to.
“I’ll keep you posted if I find out anything else.” Max stood up. There was a frown on his face. I could tell he was hurting because he trusted Sean just like the rest of us even though Sean hadn’t been found guilty of anything.
“Looks like we’ve got us a killer and we better get jingling if we are going to figure it out before Christmas.” I grabbed Finn’s hand and dragged him out of the funeral home.
Chapter Nine
“Now where are we going?” Finn held onto the handle of the passenger side door when I peeled the Wagoneer off the curb after slamming the gearshift in DRIVE.
“According to Tom Geary’s report.” I tapped the copy of Max Bogus’s report he’d put in the file he’d given me about Leighann Graves. “Leighann had Ambien in her system.”
“So, she took a sleeping pill?” He asked with a peculiar look on his face.
“I don’t know, but I think her car will have more evidence we can pull from and that’s why I’m going to drive on out to Clay’s Ferry to S&S Auto. Read the file to me.” I knew we were racing against time because it was pretty darn close to any business closing up for the night.
Clay’s Ferry was about twenty minutes away. The curvy roads were hard to navigate during a bright sunny day, much less a dark winter’s evening with the temperature dropping rapidly. I gripped the wheel and listened to Finn read the initial report and Tom Geary’s report sent by fax to Max.
“Max says here that the Ambien had been in her system and her nervous system long enough that she wouldn’t be able to unbuckle her seatbelt, drive into the water, put the car in park and put the keys in her pocket. The timeline of the effects of the drug in Leighann’s system doesn’t add up. This is where he concludes it’s a homicide.” Finn closed the file and I could feel his stare.
“This is why I couldn’t let Sean take her SUV to Graves Towing. We need to go over her car with a fine-tooth comb.” There had to be some clues. “I doubt we’ll get any prints off of it since the mud would act as sandpaper.”
“When I initially looked at the car, I didn’t see anything in there. There wasn’t a purse, jacket or nothing. I’ve never seen a teenager’s car so clean.” Finn made a good point. “I thought it was strange and I did note it in the report.”
“What about an emergency kit?” I asked. “Vividly I remember that Sean had mentioned that Leighann had an emergency kit in her car that included food, water and first aid when I went to their house on the initial phone call when they reported her missing.”
“One with her initials on it, too.” Poppa chimed in after he reappeared in the Jeep.
“You’d know it because it had her initials on it,”
I said.
“Not that an emergency kit that’s monogramed should surprise me around here, but it does. Still. I didn’t find anything in her car. Nothing.” He shook his head. “I even looked under the seats.” He reached over and flipped the heat up a notch. “It’s getting colder. It does feel like snow weather.”
“Don’t even start with that,” I warned. “I’m in no mood to hear about this ridiculous notion there’s a blizzard coming.”
“Wow, someone’s on edge. I’d heard the holidays bring it out in everyone.” He joked but I didn’t laugh. “Listen,” he reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. “This is just a job. We can’t live every second and have every conversation built around the job, Kenni. We have to have a life outside of the office.”
“We do. It’s just that right now, we need to get to Leighann’s car and figure out something.” It was hard for me to put the job as second in my life. I’d never done or known anything in my adult life other than being the badge. It’d been a challenge for me to have a life outside of the office when I clearly wasn’t used to it.
“I’m not saying we don’t go and check out the car. It’s pretty dark and it’s not like the killer left a calling card. Really, this can wait until the morning.” He was right, but I didn’t care.
“Yep. See here.” Poppa ghosted between us and he jabbed his finger in Finn’s chest. Finn drew his hand up and rubbed the spot. “My Kenni-Bug is the sheriff. She calls the shots. You take them, Buddy.”
“All I’m saying is that while it’s fresh in our minds, we need to go look at the SUV. We have flashlights.” I put the turn signal on when I got to the chain link fencing that was built around S&S Auto.
It was a first-class junk yard, tow company and impound lot. They had their cars stacked up in neat heaps and in rows of repose. The office hours posted reminded me that they closed at five p.m., something I’d forgotten.
“Says they’re closed,” Finn mentioned. “Like I said, we can come back tomorrow.”
“Not closed if I see a light on.” I noticed dots of lights coming out of a closed window blind from the far end of the building. I grabbed my bag and got out. “Somebody has got to be in there.”
Instead of knocking on the door of the office, I walked up to the window and knocked on it. Two of the blinds snapped open and two beady eyes stared at me. I recognized those eyes as the secretary who gave me a hard way to go last time I needed a car out of their lot.
I gave her a minute to walk down to the door after she’d shut the blinds.
“You again.” The woman’s happiness to see me was apparent in her tone. “I’m assuming you’re here for the girl’s SUV?”
“Actually, I just need to look at it.” I stared at her baby blue cardigan that was tucked down into the waist of her brown pleated pants. She still had the same chin length bob that looked more like a football helmet than style. “It’s part of evidence and no one is going to move that car until I clear it.”
“I’m in here finishing up the paperwork. If I can get ahold of Frank, I’ll see what I can do.” She started to pull the door shut. “And only because I feel bad about that girl and would like to get a murderer behind bars.”
Finn looked down and scratched his head. His eyes peered at me from under his brows. “Why do you think this is a murder?” He asked her.
“Because the last time she was here,” she flung a finger at me, “it was a murder. By the way she’s acting and by the late hour of the night, it’s gotta be a murder.” She turned and went back into the office, shutting the door to keep us out in the cold.
There was a slight grin on his face.
“You sure did get her britches in a tangle last time we were here.” He laughed.
“Look at him.” Poppa pointed out. “He’s pickin’ up on our sayings.”
That was two compliments for Finn tonight from Poppa in a Poppa kinda way. The funeral home window thing and now the Southern slang.
“You are a something else, Finn Vincent.” I couldn’t help but laugh back, then I got all serious again. “We are going to quickly just check out a few things. I’d like to get a good look to make sure there’s no first aid kit in there with Leighann’s initials. Or if the entire emergency kit is gone.”
“Why does that seem so important to you?” He asked.
“The side panel of the car is gone. Did she take the emergency kit out at some point after she hit or was hit by whatever? Use it?” Then it dawned on me. My jaw dropped. “What if someone slipped her the pill and knew she’d drive somewhere, become unconscious and wreck?”
“She did wreck but didn’t die.” Finn looked out as though he were trying to piece the incident together.
“We need to determine how fast the car was going because if that’s true, Max said that she didn’t have any physical signs,” I threw that out there because we had to put the facts with our theories so they would be a complete puzzle of what exactly happened.
“Do you think that someone followed her and finished off the job?” Finn asked.
“Exactly.” Poppa clapped his hands and did a jig. “We need to find out where that panel has disappeared to. That is going to be the second crime scene in this murder.”
“What’s the first?” I asked.
“Wherever she was when someone slipped her the pill.” Poppa’s words left chills down my legs.
“What’s first?” Finn asked with furrowed brows.
“Wherever the person slipped her the pill.” I repeated Poppa and looked at Finn with furrowed brows. “I mean,” I gulped and caught myself. “I think the scene we investigated at the river is the third crime scene. The first is the pill. The second is wherever that side panel is and the third is the river.”
“We need to find that side panel.” Finn ran his hands through his hair. He let out a long-exhausted sigh that hit the condensation of the cold air and a stream of smoke trailed. “You need a vacation. You say things out of nowhere like you’re having your own little conversation. After we take a look at the SUV, if Frank is here, why don’t you go home and go to sleep. Skip feeding the needy at church.”
“Yes. A murder stresses me out, but I’m not skipping church tonight. It makes me feel good.” I turned and gave Poppa the stare down. He was as sneaky as a pickpocket.
“I guess Frank is here,” Finn said and pointed at the locked gate leading into the impound lot. The lights had turned on and Frank was standing there in the same outfit I’d seen him in every time I’d interacted with the man.
“Evening, Sheriff. Deputy.” Frank unlocked the gate. “I’ve only got about fifteen minutes until I’ve got to scat. Wife duties and all.”
“Thank you, Frank.” It felt good to call him by his real name since I’d never known it. “It’ll just take a few minutes tonight. Can’t see much in the dark and we just wanted to check something out.”
“No problem.” He held the clipboard out for me to sign. I was glad to see they kept records because people were dishonest, and a killer would have no problem jumping this fence to mess with the evidence. “I’ll tell you that whoever knocked this car’s side panel off has to have some red on it.” He took me around to the missing side panel of the car. “Right here’s some strange marks. I noticed it when I was doing the checklist we have to do after we pick up a car to make sure the owner can’t come back and say we did the damage.”
Finn and I both unclipped our flashlights from the utility belt at the same time. I took a good look at the marks and made a note to take some photos of it when I got the camera out of my bag.
“I’ll take the driver’s side and you take the passenger side.” I dragged the light from the front bumper, along the side, and ended at the back bumper. There didn’t appear to be anything that struck me as unusual. I opened up the driver’s side door and shined the light at the dashboard. There was a dried water line but nothing e
lse. The floorboard was clean, and the driver’s seat was too. A little too clean for me.
I reached into my bag and grabbed a pair of gloves and some fingerprint dusting powder to coat the seatbelt release button with.
“You’re dusting for prints tonight?” Finn asked.
“Listen, if our theory about someone slipping Leighann a pill and hoping she’d wreck is true, they had to have gotten her out of her seatbelt. And a killer in a crime of heat, which appears to be what this is, doesn’t think things through enough that they would put on gloves.” I snapped gloves on my hands.
“It’s also freezing out and it was the night she was found.” Which was his way of saying the killer might’ve had on gloves.
“Exhaust all possibilities.” I didn’t have a good response for him. “I’m going to dust.”
He eased back around to his side of the SUV but not without taking a pair of gloves from my bag.
“I’m going to look under all the seats really good now,” he said while I brushed on the dust and let it settle. “You know that I can actually put my whole body into the space between the steering wheel and the seat.”
This struck me as odd because Leighann and I were pretty much the same height and build. If I were driving or she were driving, the seat wouldn’t’ve been back this far.
“What did you say?” Finn leaned into the passenger side front door and shined his flashlight in my face.
“Look.” I got into the seat and extended my arms and feet out in front of me. Neither of them touched the wheel or the pedals. “The last person in this car was a good four to five inches taller than Leighann.”
“Good work. Now you’re using your noggin’.” Poppa grinned from ear-to-ear in the back. “Which means that someone drove this car into the river, but how did they get out in time, turn the car off and put the keys in Leighann’s pocket?”