The Darkest Night

by Rick Reed

  Jack asked, “Does that tell us that she was alive or dead when she was brought here? There’s nothing to indicate she put up a struggle. Bigfoot knew her and said if she was conscious there would have been one hell of a fight.”

  “What I’m seeing makes me think she was dead. The cast-off patterns on the ceiling would be more pronounced if she was alive or newly dead when that was done. And you’re right. Those were made by some kind of long-bladed knife. I would guess a machete.”

  “What about the boot prints around the table? Any chance you can match them to the one on the door?”

  “I couldn’t even guess with what you’ve showed me, Jack. If I had access to the scene and all day to try and separate the prints out—maybe I could make an educated guess. Sorry.”

  Jack thanked Walker and found Liddell standing in the alley beside Bitty’s car.

  “Do you want to go through the rest of the house with me?” Jack asked.

  He told Liddell about Walker’s thoughts on the scene while they went back inside. Jack and Liddell walked through the remainder of the house, looking under couch cushions, in drawers, under mattresses, in closets, refrigerators, and even dumped the ice trays in the sink. They found nothing.

  “She had a laptop computer,” Liddell said. “I didn’t see a computer or any computer stuff.”

  “Neither did I,” Jack said. “Maybe Troup collected all of that.”

  They walked out the front door under the watchful eye of Mrs. Martin, who was once again standing in her doorway, and went to their car. The trip hadn’t been wasted entirely. The blood spatters had given them some indication of the way she was mutilated, but according to the coroner—or from what the Chief had told them the coroner said—she had died from a single gunshot in the face. A large caliber. The PD had not found evidence of a gun being fired. What they did have was hair and possibly tissue found in the trunk of Bitty’s Camaro.

  They walked back to the Crown Vic, and Liddell said, “Walker was right. She was killed somewhere else. They used her car to bring her here and stage this. That means another car and maybe a couple of guys. I can’t believe Mrs. Martin didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “Even the nosy have to sleep,” Jack offered.

  “I wonder why Chief Whiteside didn’t know any of this?”

  Jack said, “Who says she doesn’t know? She’s appointed by a mayor, so she must lie like a politician. It’s part of the job description.”

  They got in the car. Liddell was driving. “Parnell’s?” he asked.

  “Yes. She’s got some ’splainin’ to do.”

  * * *

  Liddell turned off Highway 1 onto the lane leading to Dusty Parnell’s. As he did, Jack caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned he saw just the back end of a dark-colored sedan disappearing down Highway 1.

  “Did you see something?” Liddell asked.

  “No. Nothing. Let’s talk to Parnell.”

  Liddell turned onto the gravel road lined with the massive oaks and the fields of wildflowers and stopped in the circular drive in front of the two-story house. Parnell’s Land Rover was there in the circular drive. They walked around the side, and the Harley and one of the dirt bikes were under the carport, but one was missing. Jack heard a motor winding up and soon Dusty pulled the dirt bike into the carport. She took her helmet off and shook out her hair.

  “I wondered when you’d be back,” she said.

  * * *

  They were sitting in a cavernous front room, in front of a huge set of picture windows. Dusty sat on one of the three couches, next to Liddell, and Jack was on an oversized ottoman. She’d skipped the offer of coffee this time, and seemed to be at peace with some big decision.

  “I guess you know I wasn’t quite honest with you earlier,” she said.

  Jack and Liddell were quiet. Silence was a great tool in interviewing. It pushed the interviewee into filling in the empty space. Dusty Parnell was a detective, but she was no different when it came to this.

  “I heard you went to eat at the Nottoway, so I figure Reyes told you about me and Bitty being in there a little while back.”

  “Who told you that?” Liddell asked.

  She kept her eyes on Jack, with quick glances in Liddell’s direction as she hesitated.

  “I guess I might as well tell you,” she said. “We were broke up, but still seeing each other. I mean, hell, we worked in the same office almost every day. It was hard . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Jack wanted to know why she hadn’t answered Liddell’s question, but he wasn’t going to interrupt. So he waited her out.

  “Look, I know this makes me look bad. I mean, I lied to you about not seeing her for several weeks.” She clasped her hands in her lap like she didn’t know what to do with them. “We had a fight. Okay? We were fighting.”

  Her eyes were on Jack while she said, “It wasn’t anything that could be related to her murder. People don’t always get along, you know. We had good days, and we had bad ones like everyone else.”

  “So what were you fighting about?” Liddell asked.

  “Honestly. It was nothing. I mean, it was something stupid. Like most fights, I guess.”

  “Is that what you argued about at the restaurant? Reyes said you were mad.” It wasn’t exactly what Reyes said. Reyes said he had a “suspicion” they had been arguing. Dusty’s hesitance to answer told Jack it was true.

  “Was Bitty seeing someone else? Is that what the fight was about?” Liddell asked.

  It was just a guess, but she gave Liddell a challenging look and said, “I know I’m not getting any younger, but I keep in shape and all that. I don’t look bad for my age. Why would you ask me that?”

  “You still haven’t told us how you knew we were at the Nottoway restaurant. Did Reyes call you?” He knew that wasn’t true, but he needed to push her a little. People said all kinds of things when they were under stress.

  She didn’t say anything. She just sat, unblinking.

  Jack said, “You’re a detective, Dusty. You know that even little things make a difference in an investigation like this. Are you going to help us out or yank us around?”

  She sat up straighter, and her face turned to stone. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Detective Murphy. You have no authority here. I don’t have to talk to you.”

  Liddell put a hand on her arm and said, “You don’t have to talk to us, Dusty. But someone will be asking these questions. Sheriff Guidry asked us to help look into this, but we don’t have to tell him everything. Not if we think it’s purely of a personal nature and has no bearing on the case.”

  She seemed to be thinking it over, and come to a conclusion. “Get out of my house.” She didn’t say it in anger, but there was a note of finality. There would be no discussion.

  The men stood and showed themselves out the side door. They walked past the carport and Jack saw something in the treads of the dirt bike Dusty had rode up on. He bent down and scraped some of it out of the tread and into the palm just as Dusty came out the door. He stuck his hand in his pocket.

  “Nice bike,” Jack said, and she just stood there with her arms crossed.

  When they got in their car, Liddell asked, “What did you find?”

  Jack brought his hand out of his pocket and pulled a tissue from the console. He brushed the material from his palm into the tissue and Liddell saw it was blackish with fibrous material embedded in it. It was still moist.

  Jack called the number they’d been given by Kurtis Dempsey, the crime scene tech. He was off duty but agreed to meet them at a family-owned business in Plaquemine called A Slice of Heaven.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  They found Kurtis sitting in a booth where he could watch the front door. He smiled nervously as they joined him.

  “Figured Liddell would remember this place,” he said. “It’s to die for.”

  The waitress, a sixty-something, hard-looking woman, came to the booth and said, “Wh
at d’ya want?”

  Kurtis said, “Bring us one of them cherry pies, Tooty. And coffee for everyone. Put it on my tab.”

  Tooty wore a pink-and-white waitress outfit that resembled a hospital candy striper’s dress. Her thick hose ran from just below her knee to the top of her dirty-white Dr. Scholl’s.

  She said, “You ain’t got no tab, Kurtis.”

  Kurtis said, “Well, start me one, Tooty. I’ve been coming here every day for nearly four years.”

  Tooty just scoffed and walked away. She came right back with three mugs and a steel carafe of coffee. She set the mugs down, and Jack put a hand over the top of his.

  “None for me. I’m trying to quit.”

  She must have thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her life, because her mouth almost twisted into a smile. “I guess you won’t be needing cream,” she said and walked away.

  Kurtis braced forward with hands on the edge of the chipped Formica table top and asked, “So what are we doing, fellas?”

  Jack pulled out the tissue, put it on the table and spread it open. Kurtis said, “Yeah. That’s the stuff. Where’d you get it? You want me to check it out for you?”

  Jack handed him the two small envelopes of dirt Kurtis had given them earlier. “I was hoping that you would.”

  Tooty came back and was holding a glass cobbler with green kitchen mitts. She set it on the table. It was made like a pie with a top crust, but was at least three inches deep like a cobbler. Kurtis stuffed the tissue and envelopes in his shirt pocket and his tongue ran around his mouth like a kid in a commercial, but to his credit, the pie/cobbler was just this side of heaven. Jack talked while Liddell and Kurtis inhaled pie.

  “We found something else today,” Jack said. “But first I need to know if you can keep this between us for now. If you have to report it to your department, I understand, but I’m hoping you’ll wait a while.” He already knew Kurtis wasn’t prone to share what he thought would disappear.

  Kurtis swallowed and watched the front. Satisfied they weren’t being overheard he said, “Depends.”

  “On what?” Jack asked. Shit! This wasn’t going the way he had thought it would. If Kurtis grew a conscience now, Jack had just given him most of their evidence. And Chief Whiteside or Troup would soon be coming for the rest.

  “Depends on you paying for this pie,” Kurtis said with a wicked grin. “Gotcha.”

  Jack took out his phone and pulled up the pictures he’d taken at Bitty’s. “Kurtis, do you know anything about Voodoo?”

  “No. There’s some of them fanatic people around here, but I don’t associate with that stuff,” Kurtis said.

  “Okay, but you do know about blood-spatter analysis?” Jack asked.

  Kurtis studied Jack and said, “Yeah. I know that stuff. Why?”

  “I’m going to send you some pictures we took earlier, but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone or show anyone. I just want your best guess as to what type of weapon was used, and if you think the victim was dead or alive when these spatters were made. Okay?”

  “I’ll try,” Kurtis said.

  “You’ll try? Or you can do what I asked?”

  “I meant I’d try to answer your questions. I won’t tell a soul. I have never even seen this stuff.”

  Jack handed the phone to Liddell, who sent the pictures to Kurtis. Jack insisted on paying and had made a friend for life.

  Back in their car, Jack said to Liddell, “Chief Whiteside sounds like a tough boss. She seems competent enough, but she keeps getting in her own way.”

  “She’s new,” Liddell said. “Maybe she feels like she has to prove herself.”

  “Maybe she’s just a bitch.”

  “That too.” Liddell put the key in the ignition. “Where to next, pod’na?”

  Jack checked the car clock. It was almost 8 P.M. “I’m going to make a call. Why don’t you call Sheriff Guidry and catch him up. But don’t mention Kurtis. I don’t want to get the boy in trouble.”

  “Who you calling?” Liddell asked.

  “Angelina.”

  * * *

  Angelina Garcia began her career as the IT person for the Evansville Police Department and had proven herself valuable in digging up—read that hacking—information using computers and her connections in the cyber world. She had first come to Jack’s attention a few years back when he was chasing a serial killer who was staging his murders as nursery rhymes. At that time, she had been assigned as a data analyst to the Vice Unit but after working with Jack and Liddell she was frequently requested by other units.

  She got engaged to Mark Crowley, the Sheriff of Daviess County, semiretired, and moved into Mark’s cabin on Patoka Lake. She was now a consultant for the Evansville Police Department and several other agencies.

  “What do you want her to do?” Liddell asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He dialed her cell phone and it went right to voice mail.

  Liddell had better luck and was engaged in a conversation with Sheriff Guidry, who must be an expert in the investigative technique of laying down bullshit. Liddell laid out their day, and skillfully told parts of the truth about the possibility of blood evidence at Bitty’s that didn’t jibe with what they were being told by PPD.

  Liddell handed the phone to Jack and Sheriff Guidry waded in. “How did the talk with Dusty go? Did she give you any shit?”

  Jack hesitated to answer, and Guidry said, “I called her right after you left, and she admitted she’d not been honest with you. In my book, lying is lying. There aren’t any degrees of being a damn liar. When do you want to talk to her again? I can make her come in to headquarters.”

  Jack could hug this guy, but he didn’t know how to explain that even if she told the truth now he wouldn’t know if she was lying again. “If she’s willing to talk, we’ll go to her,” Jack said.

  “You don’t need me there?” Guidry asked.

  “I appreciate the offer, Sheriff, but I like to work alone. I’m saddled with this yeti, so I let him come along.”

  Guidry laughed and said, “He is a big’un. I’ll tell Dusty to make herself available. You have her cell phone number?” Jack said he did. “Call me if she gives you any more shit. She’s on thin ice with me, and she knows it.”

  Jack thanked the Sheriff and hung up. Liddell, who had overheard most of the call, said, “Well, I hope we don’t have to read her Miranda rights to her. If that isn’t a coerced statement I don’t know what is. We going to talk to her tonight?”

  Jack could feel the coffee jitters, and the acid factory in his stomach was working overtime. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and not put away,” he said. “Let’s get Dusty first thing in the morning when we’re fresh. Let her sweat it out all night.” She’d had time to think about what she was going to tell them next. It was a better tactic to come at a liar sideways instead of head-on. They’d just show up early and catch her half asleep.

  “So where to now?” Liddell asked.

  “I need some sleep and some Scotch. In reverse order,” Jack said.

  By the time they got back to Landry’s house, Angelina called.

  “Hey,” Jack said.

  “Horses eat hay,” Angelina answered. “Given the late hour, I guess you didn’t call to talk about my upcoming wedding that you promised to attend with Katie. You crossed your heart and hoped to die, Jack.” Without taking a breath, she said, “Hey, you and Katie are still together, aren’t you? If you broke up again, I’ll have my soon-to-be husband beat your ass.”

  Jack had to raise his voice to get her attention. “Angelina! Dial it back a little.”

  “Tell her hi,” Liddell said from the kitchen, where he was preparing a snack of skillet-fried donuts.

  “Is that Liddell? Is he okay? Are you coming home soon? Mark told me what happened.”

  Jack wasn’t surprised that word of Liddell’s dilemma had already spread to adjacent counties at home. Police departments were like ant co
lonies.

  He didn’t know which question to answer so he answered them all. “Yes, Liddell is good. Yes, Katie and I are together, and plan to make the wedding. No, I don’t know when we will get home. And yes, I called about something other than all the above.”

  “I’ll shut up,” she said.

  That’ll be the day. “I need some help with a few names.” He gave her the names.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked when she’d written them all down.

  He could already hear her keyboard clacking in the background. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anything you can give me, I guess.”

  “Leave it to me, Jack. When do you need this?”

  “Last week,” he said and heard her snort. “We’re groping in the dark.”

  “Tell her about the missing girls,” Liddell said.

  “I heard him,” Angelina said. “What missing girls? Never mind. I’ll put that on the list.”

  Jack gave her Evelyn Blanchard to add to the missing persons.

  “Got it. If there’s anything, I’ll let you know. Is that it? ’Cause Mark is naked. I think he needs my services more than you do.”

  “That’s too much information, Angelina. Oh. Tell Mark extramarital sex is prohibited in the sheriff’s manual.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He heard her telling Mark what Jack said just before the connection was broken.

  “Want some donuts?” Liddell asked, bringing a platter of them to the table. They were still so hot the powdered sugar he’d sprinkled on top was melting.

  “Do they go with Scotch?” Jack asked, and Landry came down the stairs.

  Landry said, “Yes, Scotch is the recommended pairing for donuts,” and opened a bottle of fifty-year-old Ardbeg.

  They moved to the front porch with their drinks. Liddell had a beer. The heat had died to a tolerable level, and the smell of the Mississippi was in the air. Watching Liddell eat donuts and drink beer reminded Jack of the new breakfast cereal he’d discovered. Guinness poured over Rice Krispies. Beer-eal. The breakfast of champions.

  “Thanks for what you’re doing,” Landry said to Jack. “And for having your friend at home help out. She must be good at what she does.”