by B. L Wilson
“My friend confirmed the splatters on the grass are blood and brains. She got enough brain matter from the grass sample you gave me to do DNA testing and a blood test. It comes from a white male in his thirties.”
“You run it through the crime files yet?”
“No. I’m having trouble trying to do it without getting caught, Sarge.”
“Son, do you still have connections in Washington?” Jake Sr. turned to ask his son.
“Yeah, Dad, I do,” Jake replied.
“Well, use them,” His father ordered.
“Okay, Dad.” Jake punched in some numbers on the cell as he moved over to the window.
Liz watched him walk to the window and speak with someone. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but from his stance, she knew Jake was getting resistance. When his shoulders relaxed, she knew he’d made a breakthrough.
Jake was smiling when he came back and sat down next to her a few minutes later. “Tell your friend to send the information to this address by courier.” He wrote out the information. “We’ll know by tomorrow whose blood it is, if he has a record. It won’t tell us where he is, but it might tell who his killer was if we’re lucky.”
“Jake, send the tire and sneaker tread stuff too.”
Jake frowned. “Why? They’re not gonna find any more than we did.”
“I think you’re wrong. They have more resources at their disposal than we do. Let’s use ‘em.”
“Is it another hunch, huh, Kiddo?”
Liz shrugged. “Yeah, it is.”
Jake Sr. smiled proudly as he watched his two children discuss the case. How well they learned from the informal police seminars he held at the dinner table years ago. At the time, the only thing he thought they were listening to were the funny stories he loved to tell. Tonight, he knew they’d heard a lot more than that, like how to run an investigation with minimum resources and personnel.
“Did the sheriff say when he was gonna arrest me?” Liz played with a napkin as she eyed Ingrams.
“No, but I think it’s going to be soon, Sarge. He’s clearing it with the County Attorney to make sure he has enough for the charges to stick.”
Liz sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I’d do too.” Her gaze took in everyone’s gloomy face sitting around the dining room table. “Look, people, when that happens, I can’t be as visible I’d like, but I’m not stopping the investigation. I hope you feel the same way.”
Everyone nodded.
Liz stared at Susan the longest. “If they decide to arrest me, Susan’s gonna need twenty-four-hour protection. Her father will too, but I think the killer will focus on her. He knows she’ll keep digging until she finds out what’s happened. He’ll know I’m out of the picture temporarily.”
Jake frowned at his sister. “Lizzie, I don’t like the sound of that.”
Jake Sr. sighed. “Baby Girl, Jake’s right. I don’t know that we can protect Susan.”
Susan’s eyes widened. She stared hard at Liz. “Okay, let’s suppose for a minute I went with this scheme of yours. Is there a chance of something happening to my father, Lizzie?”
Liz shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not the way I see it.”
“Tell me how you see it?” Soft hazel eyes looked into dark eyes, searching for something and unsure whether they found it.
“I’ve been going over the evidence again. I’ve been looking at the board in the other room.” A thumb pointed to the temporary office. “Suppose the killer is someone you and your daddy know. Somebody who could keep an eye on you and you wouldn’t suspect anything. A member of your company’s board or an old friend of your father’s or even Uncle Ted.”
Jake Sr. frowned. “Lizzie, do you think your godfather would do something like this to you or the Drummond family?”
Liz shrugged. “I hope not, Dad, but so far, he’s been unwilling to conduct a meaningful investigation. I have to ask myself why he won’t conduct one. Whoever it is has been anticipating our moves the way a cop might. That’s why I figured the cops are going to come at me hard and fast tonight or tomorrow morning. They’ll arrest me and probably keep me occupied, lost in the system for a while to teach me a lesson. It’ll also allow the killer to get at Susan. Do you think your Washington friend could run fast background checks on the board members, Jake?”
Jake nodded.
“Here’s a list of them.” Liz gave him a piece of paper torn from a notepad. “Ingrams, I need to know if anyone filed a missing person report on white males fitting the DNA description in the last three weeks.”
Ingrams gave Liz a two-finger salute. “You got it, Sarge. I’ll reach out to Missing Persons. They can run it for me.”
Susan was clearly angry. Liz had been ignoring her and she was tired of it. “You still haven’t told me where I fit into your plans, Sergeant Gilmore!”
“I know, Susan. I know.” Liz glanced tenderly at Susan. “Guys, could you excuse us for a minute?”
The three men took in Susan’s angry attitude and Liz’s failed attempt to cajole her. They could feel the tension mounting between the two women and decided to leave.
“Play nice,” Jake whispered softly to his sister as he, Ingrams, and their father left the room.
“C’mere, Susan,” Liz invited, holding her arms open. She watched Susan ignore her offer of comfort and angrily march over to the dining room window.
“No!” Susan spat out as she stood hugging herself and staring out the window into the evening darkness.
Liz walked over to the same window. “Pretty night, isn’t it?” She noted the velvety night sky and then turned to study Susan’s profile. “Under other circumstances, I’d love to give you swimming lessons by moonlight.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Susan’s profile. “Just seeing you in that black bathing suit again would be enough for me. The way you looked in the suit, I’d forget about the lessons.”
“Damn you, Elizabeth Gilmore! You’ve been nothing but trouble since I met you,” Susan spat out angrily as she turned to confront Liz. “First, you threaten to arrest me for drugs and speeding. Now, you’re investigating my family’s old friends because you think one of them is trying to kill Daddy and me. To make matters worse, you’re treating the possibility of your impending arrest and loss of a job as nothing! What am I supposed to do while you’re in jail?” she wailed, then turned to look out the window again.
“Whatever Jake or my father asks you to do.” Liz peeked at Susan’s profile and took in the stubbornness in her jaw line. “Look, Susan, I don’t want to do this. Do you think I wanna be in jail while all this is going on?”
“Afraid you’ll to miss all the action, Sergeant?” Stormy hazel eyes glared at Liz.
“Baby, I…”
Susan raised an eyebrow and then folded her arms across her chest.
“Sorry, I forgot.” Liz cleared her throat, then looked steadily into hazel eyes. “No, that’s not it, Susan, not by a long shot!” Bold dark eyes looked Susan’s body up and down, then came back to her face. She rubbed her neck as she spoke. “I want you in my life, Susan Drummond. I’m in love with you. It’s killing me that I can’t protect you. If I think about it too much, I won’t be able to do this.”
Susan’s eyes softened. “I didn’t know you felt that way, Lizzie.” She reached over to stroke Liz’s cheek.
Liz pulled Susan’s hand away from her face to kiss the palm. “My old man said I shoulda told you earlier, but I’m kinda stubborn. I have to pick my own time. I wanted you to...”
Susan pulled Liz into a warm embrace. “Sergeant Gilmore, do you always talk this much? If you do, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” She cupped Liz’s face for a kiss as she felt gentle hands rubbing her back and then kneading her hips. She sighed. “I’m going to miss this, Lizzie.”
Liz stared at Susan and then smiled gently. “It’s not like I’m going away forever. The most I’ll be in the pokey is a few hours. I’ll have Ingrams and my father spread the word you found new evidence.
You know who committed the murders. We have to bring the killer out into the open. This is the only way that I can think to do it. I’m hoping my father can talk the County Attorney into releasing me on my own recognizance without much fanfare. I want to be with you when he strikes, but I want him to think I’m still in jail.”
Susan frowned at Liz. “You’ll have a record. Cops aren’t supposed to have records. They’ll fire you, Lizzie.”
A finger touched Susan’s lips and gently traced their outline as Liz stared into hazel depths for a moment. “I know, Love, but I don’t have a choice in this. If you can think of another way, I’m listening. If I have to give up my job to save your life, so be it.” Liz hugged Susan and then stared into her face.
Susan returned Liz’s gaze. She saw a fire burning in them and something else too. She saw … love.
As Ingrams predicted, Sheriff Reeves sent his men over to the Drummond house and arrested his sergeant. Liz could tell they were clearly uncomfortable arresting a fellow cop who was their sergeant. She reassured the men they were just following orders, that she bore no ill will toward them. Jake and her father weren’t as comfortable with the arrest, but for Susan’s sake, they went along silently. The rulebook required that suspects be in handcuffs at the point of arrest and so Liz’s fellow officers handcuffed her in Susan’s dining room. Arrest protocol or not, Susan didn’t like what she saw. She was ready to interfere until Liz asked for a few minutes alone with her.
“C’mere, Love, and give me a hug,” Liz asked as she stared across the room into angry hazel eyes.
Susan shook her head and stubbornly stayed where she was.
“Please,” Liz begged and held out shackled wrists.
“No, Lizzie, I don’t like this. Why can’t we find another way?” Susan asked without moving another inch in her direction.
Liz sighed heavily as she looked at Susan, then dropped her handcuffed hands in defeat. “We’ve been through this before. Give me another option, Susan. I’ll gladly take it.” She grinned. “Come over and give me a hug. I’ll be out before you know it.” Cuffed hands reached out to Susan again.
Susan drew closer until she was in front of Liz. She ducked under the cuffs so Liz could hold her.
Liz could feel Susan trembling first and then shaking as she cried silently against a solid chest. “Susan, please don’t do that. If you cry, I might start crying too.” She stroked Susan’s back awkwardly with the cuffs on. “I love you, Susan Drummond,” she whispered. “Give me a kiss to last until I see you again.”
Susan kissed Liz hard. The kiss deepened and then softened.
Liz found herself moaning as Susan slipped her tongue inside her warm cavity.
The kiss ended suddenly when Susan pulled away.
Surprised at her withdrawal, Liz stared into a distraught, tear-streaked face.
“Just go, Sergeant Gilmore, before I do something we’ll both regret.” Susan tenderly stroked Liz’s arm. “Come back to me in one piece, Lizzie,” she added, stifling a sob.
Liz gazed into damp hazel eyes, grinned, and issued a salute with cuffed hands. “Yes, Ma’am, I’ll definitely do that!”
Susan watched the sheriff’s men lead their sergeant and her lover out the door and then into the squad car. They made sure she didn’t bump her head as she slid into the backseat. She willed Liz to look back as the cops drove off with their precious cargo aboard. Liz turned around in the backseat of the patrol car. She held Susan’s eyes for a moment and then boldly winked, which made Susan smile.
“What the hell is going on here?” Liz muttered. She sat in the bullpen, the caged area at the rear of the courthouse, and waited impatiently for the arraignment process. It wasn’t as though the court was so busy the judge couldn’t conduct the arraignment right away. Hadn’t he heard of speedy due process? The town wasn’t so small that it didn’t have a night court. Liz paced back and forth in the bullpen, annoyed this was taking so long. She needed to get back to Susan and solve the goddamned case. She looked at her wrist, then remembered she didn’t have a watch to check the time. She stopped pacing in the middle of the bullpen to rub her chin. “Damn it! This crap could take forever.”
The judge’s clerk called her name. One of her colleagues unlocked the gate and escorted her to the front of the courtroom. Her attorney was already there waiting when she joined him to stand in front of the judge. They listened as the County Attorney read the list of charges against her, then judge asked for her plea. She pleaded not guilty. The County Attorney argued for remand while her attorney asked for her release. After perfunctory questioning by the judge, he released Liz on her own recognizance.
“There is release and then there is freedom,” Liz muttered as a fellow officer escorted her back to the precinct. She groaned inwardly, remembering how police procedure dictated she return to the holding cells at the precinct until the department finished her paperwork. Finishing that paperwork could take anywhere from one to three hours. She might not see the outside world for another two hours or more. How things looked different from the other side of the bars, she mused.
“Sarge, how’re you doing?” Ingrams asked. He stood in front of the holding cell, looking slightly embarrassed to find his supervisor there.
Liz shrugged. “It’s not the greatest feeling the world, Ingrams. I don’t like being in here with some of the same people I’ve put in here for drunk driving and other stuff, but I’m handling it. At least they put me far enough away that I don’t have to worry about my safety.”
“My friend in the lab said I should tell you about the results,” Ingrams remarked in a low voice as he glanced at Liz through the metal bars. He motioned her closer to whisper, “She said there was something funny about the tests.”
Liz rubbed her temples and then frowned at Ingrams. “What do you mean something funny about the tests, Ingrams?”
“The lab in Washington told my friend how he’d done the standard background checks on the board members. You know: job history, criminal records, outstanding debts, army and medical records, and stuff like that.”
Liz nodded. “Yeah, what did he find?”
“He decided to run hospital records too.”
Liz sighed. She wished the young cop would hurry up with whatever he wanted to say. “What did he find, Ingrams?”
Ingrams rubbed the back of his neck and stared at Liz. “Drummond and his daughter don’t have the same blood type.”
“So what? Neither do my father and Jake.”
“Yeah, well your mother had the same type as you. Jake has DNA markers from your father and your mother just as you do. That’s what my friend at the lab says anyways.”
“So does Susan’s blood type match her mother’s?”
“The type doesn’t match, but the DNA markers should. We can’t tell without a sample from her mother.”
Liz frowned. “That’s not gonna happen, Ingrams. Susan’s mother is dead. Does she match anyone on that list?”
“Yeah, she does. This is where it gets weird.” Ingrams rubbed his neck, then took off his hat and scratched his head. A large hand nervously played with his Stetson and he looked down at his feet.
Liz grabbed the bars and squeezed them as if she could bend them to get out. “Come on, Ingrams. Don’t drag this out. Tell me what they found.”
“Miss Drummond’s blood type matched with Old Man Flint. Her DNA has 90 point similarities with the son, John Flint Jr.”
“What?” The news stunned Liz. She’d imagined plenty of scenarios, but Johnny Flint being Susan’s brother wasn’t one of them. That was something she hadn’t considered in her wildest dreams. If it were true, God, she hated what she was thinking. She grabbed the cell bars tightly and held on until her brown knuckles went pale. “Sweet freaking Jesus, are you sure, Ingrams? I mean, maybe the lab made a mistake.”
“My friend figured you’d say that, so she asked them to run the tests three times. They got the same result each time,” Ingrams replied quietly, watching his
sergeant as she tried to decide what to do next.
Liz released her grip on the bars. She was silent as she thought about the implications of Ingrams’ information. Johnny Flint was the same man she wanted to bust for sexual assault the first time she met him. He was also the same man who gave Susan such a hard time at the board meeting, according to Jake. How could that man be her brother? What a nightmare for Susan. She wondered if the son of bitch knew when he tried to fondle Susan at the club. She shuddered when she thought about it.
“Do you think he knows about this, Sarge?” Ingrams asked.
“God, I hope not. If he does, everything he did since the explosion was a lie that he staged. That would make him even more dangerous than I thought.” Liz realized if it was an act, then Flint was trying to throw Susan off guard for some reason. It also meant he’d hurt his own sister to get what he wanted, only she didn’t know what that was. “What about the blood and brain samples at the site?”
“It’s a match with a petty thief that goes by the name of Howard Loomis. He did time for B & E and armed robbery. The rest of the test samples are going to take a while to process officially, but my friend thinks it’ll probably match him. Loomis had an arson bust years ago when he was a kid, but the county attorney didn’t have enough hard evidence, so they declined to prosecute.”
“Is he still around, Ingrams?” Liz quietly asked. She remembered the crime scene and the brain matter they’d found splattered over the grass.
“I don’t know. His last address known was somewhere north of here. Raleigh, I think.”
Liz closed her eyes for a moment, trying to imagine her next move. “Ingrams, tell my brother. No, cancel that. Ask my father to talk to Owen Drummond again. I think he knows more than he is saying to us. I hope he’ll talk to my father. Tell Jake to stick to Susan like glue until I get out of here. If Flint’s the one, he’ll try luring her away somewhere where he can be alone with her.” Liz frowned. “Are there any construction sites that Flint Industries is working on right now?”