The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  Jesse continued to stare. “Was the kid with her?”

  “What?”

  “When she stopped by, was their kid with her?”

  “Oh. No. Dropped him off at the grandparents’ house first. Didn’t want him to get sick, or so she explained. She’s back in the spare bedroom, talking to Axelrod. She’s pretty shaken up. They both are.”

  “No wonder.” Jesse was pretty shaken up himself. Then he frowned. “Did he purchase the cold medicine today?”

  “It’s a new box. Plastic bag in the trash can contained the receipt. Paid cash early this morning, right after he called in. Still need to confirm it was actually him that purchased it. I’m sure they’ll be requesting video from the drug store.”

  Jesse looked at Brian, recognized that his thoughts were tracking along the same lines. “Yeah,” Brian said in answer to Jesse’s silent question. “If you’re planning on killing yourself that day, why bother treating your cold symptoms, right? That suggests a desire to get well.”

  “Or maybe just a desire to stop coughing.”

  “True. But it strikes me as odd, and it seems to strike you that way, too. Maybe he wasn’t planning on killing himself.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “None that I’ve seen,” Brian said. “Aside from the bedroom and the table here being shoved out of the way, nothing in the apartment is out of place. Has a cleaning service, the building manager said, that was here yesterday afternoon. The forensics crew said they must do a good job, because they’re not finding a lot of fingerprints.”

  “So if it is indeed suicide, the question is what happened between this morning and afternoon that made him decide to kill himself.” Jesse stared with frustrated resignation at the detective’s corpse. “He’s wearing my shirt.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Gannon,” Jesse explained. Then he pulled Brian slightly out of the doorway, and continued in an undertone. “That’s the shirt I took off and loaned to Jillian the night of your party. The one that disappeared from the laundry room in the basement.”

  Brian opened his mouth. Closed it. And then his face drained of all color. “Jesus. Are you sure?”

  “It was from one of my fraternity events in college. I’ve had it forever. I’m sure.”

  “How did Gannon get a hold of it? And why the hell would he choose to wear it when he hung himself?”

  “I don’t know. As a final up yours?” Jesse suggested. Then he heaved a big sigh. “I confronted him the other day. After the meeting. Regarding the DNA match on the toothpick I found beneath your sister and Jillian’s basement window.”

  “And you think that’s enough for him to decide that swinging from a rope is his only option? Proof that he was poking around?”

  “Maybe if the poking around were connected to breaking and entering. Or leaving a dead animal on the doorstep.”

  Brian’s hand shook when he lifted it to rub over his bald head, but his voice remained steady. “The squirrel I can maybe understand. Like Jillian said, payback for her testifying in McGrath’s parole hearing, making sure he stayed behind bars. But why the hell would he break into the house? Why would he take your shirt?”

  “Those are questions we need to answer.” Jesse considered. “Did he leave a note?”

  “Not that anyone has located so far. They’re waiting on one of the tech people to get into his laptop, see if he typed out a draft or maybe composed an email that he didn’t send. But shit, Jesse.”

  “We need to check the soles of his shoes. All of them.”

  “I’m guessing you have a reason.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed that the floor in the boiler room at your sister’s place is crumbling. The old concrete grit was stuck in my shoe tread after I left that morning. I noticed some of it on the floorboard of my Jeep. If he was there, if he did somehow bypass the alarm – or maybe Jillian was mistaken and she actually forgot to set it. Anyway, if he was there and messed around in the basement, took the shirt – whatever his reasons – he’d possibly still have some concrete dust in the soles of his shoes.”

  “Unless he tossed them. Or cleaned them. Or wore freaking booties.” Brian gestured significantly to their covered feet.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But if we can put him in that basement, it’s a place to start. We need to find out how he came to be in possession of that shirt.” Jesse felt like there was a bigger picture here, something more than just a cop who might have committed a felony or two and was afraid of being found out. The truth was that cops did far worse than that and, with a good union representative, faced seriously reduced charges.

  Unless the breaking and entering and the dead squirrel were only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Maybe Gannon had far more damaging secrets.

  Jesse looked past Brian, into the dining room. “We’re going to have to have a talk with Axelrod and the other detectives. I need to tell them about the toothpick and the shirt, as well as our conversation. But first I want to have a look at the scene.”

  They went back into the dining room, where Jesse introduced himself to the detective who’d been assigned to the case – at least the one who was still in the room – a woman by the name of Portman. “Has the photographer documented everything?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “And we’ve got the sketch and measurements, too. As soon as the ME gets here, we’ll start the examination of the bod…” she stopped herself, flushed. “Of Detective Gannon, I mean. I sort of shut out the fact that he’s one of ours.”

  “Sometimes shutting down your emotions is the only way to do the job until you can process it all later.” Jesse pulled on gloves. “Do you mind if I take a closer look?”

  She shook her head. “You know the drill. Knock yourself out.”

  “Thank you.” Jesse approached the middle of the room, walked around the macabre centerpiece. His nostrils flared at the unpleasant stench of violent death and he couldn’t stop the brief flare of anger when he got close enough to see the date printed on the shirt. It seemed like the deliberate sullying of one of Jesse’s fonder memories.

  But like the detective, he shut out – as much as he could – his more human, visceral reactions and tried to observe with an objective eye. There didn’t appear to be any signs of violence on the body, apart from the obvious injuries associated with the ligature around his neck. Jesse stared. It hadn’t been readily apparent from a distance, or maybe he’d simply been too stunned by the presence of his shirt to fully comprehend what he was seeing. But up close the nature of the ligature was apparent.

  He turned to the detective. “Christmas lights?”

  She winced. “Yes.”

  Jesse glanced around. “He doesn’t have a tree. No decorations. Do you know if he had a problem with the holiday? Seasonal disorder, or whatever that’s called.”

  “Not that I know of. The ex-wife said that this was his weekend to keep their son, and he planned to take him to see Santa and maybe do some decorating then, although she says he wasn’t much into decking the halls.”

  Warning bells went off in Jesse’s head. “Did they have a close relationship? He and his son?”

  She shrugged. “Close enough, I think. To be honest, I didn’t know Detective Gannon very well. I only recently moved into the department. I think that’s one of the reasons I got this assignment – the hope that I could stay objective.”

  “Have you found any decorations? Storage tubs or whatever?”

  “Not yet. But there’s a room on the first floor of the building where tenants can rent additional storage space. We’ll be checking that out next.”

  Jesse turned back toward Gannon’s body. The Christmas lights, even more than the presence of his T-shirt, made him uneasy. Rather than simply an expedient means of hanging oneself – especially if the lights hadn’t been handy and the sick, medicated man had had to trudge to the storage room to get them – seemed like a statement.

  A statement of what was the question.

&nbs
p; Jesse continued his examination as best he could without actually touching the body. That would have to wait for the ME. Gannons’s hands hung limp in front of the pockets of his jeans, which remained unbuttoned. His feet were bare.

  Jesse leaned in, squinted at what appeared to be something sticking out of one of the pockets. He froze, and then glanced over his shoulder.

  “Agent Parker?” he called out. “You want to come take a look at this?”

  Brian abandoned his conversation with the uniformed cop at the door and returned to the dining room. “What?”

  “Does that look like what I think it does?”

  Brian grimaced as he leaned in closer. And then stood up and cursed.

  Sensing that she was missing something of importance, Detective Portman came over. “What’s up?”

  With a sinking feeling, Jesse turned to address her. “The little plastic bag in his pocket? I’m pretty sure it contains LSD.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JILLIAN anchored the length of fresh garland on the end of the porch rail. The air was crisp, but not so cold that she couldn’t enjoy what she was doing. In fact, it was a perfect December morning. Last night’s rain had moved off, leaving a sky washed clear and blue as…

  As Jesse’s eyes was the first thought that popped into her mind, but she frowned. He’d acted very oddly after his brother appeared at their table and pointed out that he’d seen Jillian in his law office that day. Almost as if he was uncomfortable with the two of them talking. She wondered if he were… embarrassed somehow by the fact that she’d consulted with a criminal defense attorney, despite the fact that he’d suggested that very course of action. Which she would have done anyway. She had too much experience to have faith in the system to protect her best interests.

  Or maybe he simply didn’t like his brother knowing that she’d been in need of those services.

  She supposed she should have recognized the name Wellington on the door along with several others, but she’d had more important things on her mind. Like protecting herself legally. Ever since those detectives had shown up, she’d felt like there was a safe perched somewhere above her, and even though she couldn’t see it, the slightest move in the wrong direction would send it crashing down on her head.

  Because she was decorating for Christmas – one of her favorite things to do – Jillian refused to allow her thoughts to be dragged down into that particular morass. The fruit basket had already tainted her holiday association enough, and she wasn’t going to let it go any further. She had a holiday-themed wedding to photograph later this afternoon – the holiday-themed wedding of the year, as the bride’s sweet but very socially connected mother had pointed out on more than one occasion – and she needed to be in good spirits.

  She tucked her earbuds into place and pulled up the Christmas playlist on her phone.

  Having already dragged the ladder out of the basement, Jillian set it up in front of the porch so that she could wind red ribbon through the pine and magnolia leaf garland. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree played in her ears and she swayed her hips slightly as she worked. The song had just segued into Jingle Bell Rock when she felt a hand on her leg.

  “Oh!” Jillian lost her balance, falling backwards. She found herself in Jesse’s arms with the ribbon still clutched in her hand.

  Definitely as clear and blue as a rain-washed sky, she thought as she looked at him from a distance of inches. Although at the moment they were a little red around the edges.

  He studied her a moment, his gaze drifting down from her eyes toward her mouth, but then his jaw clenched and he set her back on her feet.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay.” She turned off her playlist, removed the buds from her ears. “I probably had the music too loud.”

  They continued to stare at each other for several heartbeats, and Jillian began to see that it wasn’t just his eyes. His whole body seemed to radiate exhaustion. “Are you okay?”

  “That depends on your definition. Look, I know I’m intruding again, but do you have a few minutes?”

  “Sure.” Realizing she was still holding onto the ribbon, she sat the coil on the ladder. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “As much as I’d like to finally land a blue marlin.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “A very large one.”

  He followed her up the steps, and Jillian shoved aside the tubs of decorations she’d left littering the entryway. “Excuse the mess. Katie’s been so busy that I just decided to haul everything out and get started without her. Not that her participation usually extends much beyond her drinking egg nog or wine and telling me how great it looks. She cooks a mean Christmas dinner, but decorating is not particularly her thing. I… is something wrong?”

  She noticed that Jesse was standing just inside the doorway, staring into one of the tubs. “Your decorations are very organized.”

  “Oh. That’s Katie. I should have added that she’s far better at taking down than she is at putting up, as she labels everything and – as you can see – even wraps the lights around special clothes hangers to store them. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d probably have to kill her.”

  Jesse glanced up.

  “I’m kidding, of course.”

  Jesse nodded, and then lifted his glasses to rub his bloodshot eyes. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just sort of fried.” Then his head came up in the manner of an animal sniffing the wind. “Is Katie here? Something smells delicious.”

  “No, Katie and Davis went out to do some shopping before the crowds got too crazy. I’m making pryaniki.”

  “I’m not going to pretend that I know what that is, but I’m pretty sure I want the recipe.”

  “You bake?”

  Jesse scratched behind his ear, looking uncomfortable. “At the risk of sounding even more like the mama’s boy you accused me of being, my mom made all five of us learn how to cook. Baking isn’t my forte, but I could probably figure out how to measure ingredients if it made my kitchen smell like that. When I get a kitchen again, that is. Or you can go into business with Katie and then all of my dietary needs will be covered in one place. I’ll never have to touch a stove again.”

  Jillian laughed. “The pryaniki I can make with unfailing success, but I think I’ll leave the cooking to Katie. Come on.” She tilted her head. “You can have some with your coffee.”

  He entered the kitchen behind her, pulling up short in the doorway. “Holy shit. It looks like the Keebler elves have been here.”

  Jillian looked around at the multiple racks of cooling cookies. “Tis the season. I made enough for the neighbors because we did a cookie swap thing last year and everyone seemed to love them. Here.” She took a few off the nearest rack, slid them onto a plate. “Go ahead and sit down. I’ll get the coffee.”

  “Thanks.” He dropped heavily onto one of the stools at the counter, took a bite, and then closed his eyes in apparent bliss. “Oh my God.”

  Jillian smiled as she poured coffee into a mug hand-painted with holly leaves. “It’s an old family recipe. Handed down to my mother from her mother who got it from her mother and so on.”

  “Are you still in contact with any of your relatives in Russia?”

  Jillian hesitated. “No. My mother’s father abandoned the family when she was a young girl, and she spent most of her childhood training for the ballet. Her mother died when she was just a teen.”

  “Rough.”

  Jillian glanced up. “She wasn’t fortunate, like I was, to have an aunt to step in, love her like her own daughter. It was difficult, losing both my parents, but my aunt and my cousins made me feel a rightful part of their family. In that I was very lucky.”

  “You mentioned that your cousins don’t live nearby.”

  “No, and that’s a hardship for me, even though they’re a good bit older. One is career military and he’s been stationed all over the world. The other lives in Alaska.”

&n
bsp; He used one of the napkins from a holder beside him to wipe the stickiness from his fingers. “Alaska. I hear the salmon fishing there is fantastic.”

  “Do you relate everything back to fishing?” she said as she sat the mug in front of him.

  “If at all possible.”

  “Must be a professional hazard,” she said as she poured hot water over an herbal teabag, since she’d already consumed several cups of coffee while she was baking. “Kind of like I’m always framing photographs in my mind.”

  She turned to find Jesse staring at her, an odd look on his face. “What?” She rubbed her fingers beside her mouth. “Do I have cookie glaze on my face or something?”

  “Jillian.” The tone of his voice made her slowly lower her hand. “Sit down. Please.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  He pulled out the stool cattycorner to his. “Please.”

  “Okay.” She slid onto the tractor-style seat and assessed the funereal look in his eyes. Her throat seemed to constrict. “Is it… Brian or…”

  She left the question open-ended. In response, Jesse lifted his hip, pulled something that looked like a thin wallet from his pocket and slid it across the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s pulling the bandage off in one quick yank.”

  Her heart began to knock in her chest like a caged animal that senses a storm approaching. Knowing that it’s trapped and can do nothing to avoid the elements. Keeping her eyes on his, she reached out, flipped the leather bi-fold open.

  And then stared down at his ID. His federal ID.

  “You’re an FBI agent.” She didn’t even recognize her own voice. It sounded hollow. Like it was coming back to her across a vast, empty distance.

  “Yes.”

  Something began to percolate inside her at the blasé nature of his reply. Like oh, hey, by the way… That, she did recognize. It was betrayal and disbelief, coated with a fine layer of rage.