by Debra Webb
“Be hard to get close with the cops watching her.”
He laughed. Was that fear he heard? “That’s right.” He faced his loyal foot soldier. Bent his head so he could look at the fool over his Locs. “But the cops ain’t your problem.” He bumped his chest with his fist. “The King is your problem. I’m the only one you need to be worried about.”
The fool rocked his head up and down like he was having some kinda fit. Probably shit hisself.
“Now go on and do what I told you.”
The man he called his “eyes” didn’t waste no time. He got the hell out.
That was the only way to maintain loyalty.
Demand it.
He turned back to his favorite view. This shit was over.
Braddock had a hard-on for the King. Maybe he wanted to be chief or something. whatever. That motherfucker had picked the wrong war.
And that doctor bitch, she’d be tits up with her fucking sister if she didn’t watch herself.
Maybe she would anyway. She’d had it coming for a long time.
Too long.
CHAPTER SIX
2:30 PM
CJ made the right turn off Arcadia Circle into the parking lot of the Forensic Sciences building. The new two-story redbrick structure stood in the center of the divided parking area with only the few contractor-planted trees surrounded by ornamental grass as landscaping. When CJ had lived here the autopsies had been done in Birmingham or Montgomery. Some things, it seemed, had changed.
As promised, Braddock was waiting. With his neatly pressed khakis, navy polo, and expensive, hand-crafted leather shoes, he could have just left the golf course after a few holes with his buddies. Or gotten out of the informal service at the big Methodist Church on Whitesburg where the thirtysomethings gathered to see and be seen. But Braddock didn’t play golf or go to church. No. The well-educated and highly polished major-crimes detective spent all his time making sure justice was served.
On his terms.
Regardless of the cost to others.
A burst of outrage tightened the muscles of her face. She should appreciate that any member of Huntsville’s Police Department had shown up at all . . . but she didn’t. She didn’t trust the motive or the man. He wasn’t here because he cared. There had to be something in it for him or his reputation.
CJ shut off the engine and pushed away the anger. She exhaled a weary sound. All she had to do was get through the next few minutes.
Then she never had to see Braddock again.
She got out of the rental. Braddock pushed away from his snazzy sports car and strode in her direction. His eyes were shielded by designer sunglasses. She couldn’t recall offhand the brand, but she’d seen the hotshot surgeons around the hospital sporting similar ones. Nothing was too good for the self-important detective.
“CJ.” He paused a solid eighteen inches of asphalt away. She’d ordered him out of her personal space enough times that he’d apparently finally gotten the message.
Still, the subtle scent of his familiar cologne and the masculine strength of his tall frame seeped into her senses. Reminded her of those few evenings they’d shared. Dinner and conversation. He’d said all the right things . . . made her yearn for more. Made her actually rethink the prospect of a real relationship in her life.
Good thing she’d gotten that painful wake-up call in the nick of time.
She stared at him now, too numb to feel the anger the mere mention of his name usually generated. That he didn’t bother removing his eyewear was irrelevant. She knew how brown his eyes were. Intensely dark, completely unreadable, and entirely too observant.
And completely capable of deceit.
She adjusted the strap of the bag dragging at her shoulder. “Braddock.”
His hands slid into his trouser pockets as if to ensure he didn’t make the mistake of reaching out to her. “I know this is difficult. Like I said on the phone, you don’t have to do this part—”
“I’m a doctor, Braddock.” She shoved the car door closed and squared her shoulders. “Bodies are an integral element of what I do every day. I’ve seen my share of mutilation, assault, and more degrees of decomposition than I care to list. So let’s just get this done.” Her lips compressed into a hard but shaky line. She didn’t want Braddock or anyone else identifying her sister. CJ needed to do this herself. Be strong. Go through the steps. Don’t think.
Braddock studied her a moment. Did he think she should be crying on his shoulder? He just didn’t know. She had been through this before with her mom. She’d always done what she had to do; she would do it now. Taking care of Shelley was her responsibility.
Too bad she’d failed so miserably.
Don’t think. Just do it.
“All right, then.” Braddock gestured to the side entrance. “The ME is waiting. I had to pull some major strings to make this happen.”
Though she couldn’t care less what hoops he’d had to jump through, she nodded. Followed as he led the way. She quickened her pace to keep up with his long strides. He wasn’t carrying a weapon today. Maybe even he conceded to the Lord’s Day on some level. His badge and cell phone were clipped to his belt. No matter that she wanted nothing to do with him; he was her only link to what had happened to her sister. There were questions she wanted to ask, details she needed to understand, but those could wait a few minutes.
Right now, she wanted this over.
She’d managed to pull off the whole I’m-a-professional-I-can-take-it attitude so far, but with the way her insides were quaking, that wasn’t going to last long.
The heat index had to be well over a hundred, turning the city’s miles and miles of concrete and asphalt into a highly efficient oven. Her blouse and slacks were stuck to her skin. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck.
God, she hated this place.
Inside the lobby, the climate-controlled air chilled her sweat-dampened skin, making her shiver. Braddock acknowledged the security guard at the reception desk with a nod, then pointed to the double doors marked PERSONNEL ONLY. The guard responded with a two-fingered salute and the doors started their slow swing inward.
The fact that CJ had known for a long time that this moment was a strong probability considering her sister’s lifestyle failed to diminish how much it hurt. How badly she wanted this to be a misunderstanding. Why couldn’t it be like in the movies? She would stare down at the body and find that it wasn’t Shelley.
But that wouldn’t happen. Braddock was here.
Beyond those double doors a long white center corridor led to what CJ presumed were laboratories, autopsy rooms, and cold storage units. The too-familiar smells assaulted her. No matter how new or high-tech the facility, there was no perfected method to disguise the overpowering scent of preservative chemicals and refrigerated flesh.
A lump rose in her throat.
Her sister was in there . . . in one of those poly bags inside a deep metal drawer.
Focus on the steps.
A woman, blond hair, tall, buxom, stepped into the corridor. “Detective Braddock,” she said with a smile, then turned her attention to CJ. “Ms. Patterson.”
“Dr. Patterson,” Braddock said, circuitously correcting the woman, “this is Medical Examiner Candice Dobbins.”
“Dr. Dobbins.” CJ extended her hand.
“Dr. Patterson.” Dobbins cast a self-conscious glance at CJ, then gestured to the door across the hall. “This way.”
Dobbins entered storage unit two. She paused long enough to pull on latex gloves, offered a pair to CJ. “We don’t generally allow family members back here, but Detective Braddock insisted.”
“Thank you.” As she tugged the latex into place, CJ’s heart started that desperate pounding despite her best efforts to keep the rate measured and steady. She consciously adjusted her respiration to a slower, deeper pattern in hopes of heading off another adrenaline dump.
Wasn’t working.
Dobbins pulled a chart, then selected draw
er nine. The glide of metal on metal hissed as she hauled open the long shelf.
Pulse thumping, CJ moved to one side of the extended drawer unit. She stared at the white body bag as if this was her first time seeing one, as if she were watching herself do this rather than actually doing it.
“She’s scheduled for autopsy the end of the week,” Dobbins explained. “If I can get to her sooner, I will. Preliminary tox screen showed no suspicious compounds or illegal substances.”
Startled from the surrealism, CJ’s gaze met the ME’s. “No drugs?” Shelley had said she was clean in her voice mail, but CJ had assumed that she had lied yet again.
Dobbins shook her head. “No drugs.” She flipped through the chart and continued. “At Detective Braddock’s request I performed a priority tox screen and a brief visual assessment as soon as she arrived.”
Shelley had told her the truth. For once.
The bottom fell out of CJ’s stomach. Her head started to spin with emotions she couldn’t afford to feel right now.
“There is,” Dobbins said as she prepared to open the bag, “evidence of past physical trauma, bruises from several days to more than a week old, as well as abrasions, scratches, and bruising as recent as a few hours before death.”
CJ managed a nod. “Her ex-boyfriend beat her up pretty badly just over a month ago.” The bastard. CJ would bet anything he had done this. She turned to Braddock. “Have you arrested Ricky Banks?” If Braddock hadn’t taken that step already, he was a bigger fool than she’d thought. “You know what he did to her on a regular basis.” Banks’s mistreatment of Shelley went back more than a decade. “It’s a miracle this didn’t happen before now.”
“I’m well aware of Shelley’s relationship with Banks,” Braddock confirmed. “He’s at the top of our suspect list.”
He’d removed the sunglasses. She tried to read what she saw in his eyes, couldn’t. That he shifted his attention away from her scrutiny too quickly suggested there was more he had no intention of sharing.
The outrage that always accompanied any time she spent in his presence stirred. “I want all the details, Braddock.”
He shared a look with Dobbins. CJ’s anxiety level skyrocketed. Why didn’t he just give her the facts he had? On the flight here, she’d compiled a mental list of questions she needed to ask. Between arranging that flight and clearing her schedule at the hospital, she’d had her hands full until she’d collapsed into the seat on the plane.
“You’re aware,” he began, choosing his words so carefully that she couldn’t possibly miss the tactic, “that there’s a lot we won’t know until the autopsy is complete.”
That part she got. The outrage shifted into all-out fury. “But there are things you do know, like who found her? Where was she? What were the circumstances?” Breathe. Her mind kept telling her to look down, to just look at Shelley, but she couldn’t. Not and hold it together.
“There are things we don’t fully understand just yet,” he confessed. “It’s complicated. In the best interest of the investigation, we’re not prepared to release certain details at this time.”
“Are you refusing to tell me anything at all?” Could he do that? More of that anxiety and outrage coiled inside her. She needed to know, to understand how this had happened.
“I’ll give you what I can.” Reluctance and frustration presented itself in his posture, on his face. “She was found in the woods on the west side of the intersection of Triana and Johnson. A couple of kids stumbled upon the scene just before dark on Saturday evening. A nylon rope had been used to hang her . . . by the neck. There was drug paraphernalia. But as Dr. Dobbins said, none in her blood.”
The image of Shelley hanging from a tree in those woods invaded CJ’s mind.
Well before becoming a doctor, CJ had been intimately familiar with murder. She’d grown up in a neighborhood where the occasional murder and the frequent robberies and assaults were more often than not a part of the norm. Her own father had been murdered. But this wasn’t the guy down the street . . . or the bastard of a father who’d slapped their mother around and terrorized his own children.
This was Shelley. Her baby sister.
CJ didn’t wait for Dobbins. She reached down, carefully opened the bag. Her heart sank.
She stared at her sister’s ashen skin. Long honey-blond hair lay behind her head like a silk sheet. Her blue eyes, the same deep, deep blue both she and CJ had inherited from their mother, were closed in death. Her slender throat was bruised and bore angry ligature marks. There was an abrasion on her left cheek. Bruising on her upper arms as if someone had grabbed her and maybe shaken her. CJ’s chest tightened in agony. She should have been here . . . shouldn’t have let this happen.
She lifted her gaze to the ME’s. “Did you find anything else?”
“Minor scrapes and tiny tissue tears along her shins and thighs, possibly indicating that she may have been running through the underbrush in the wooded area where her body was discovered.”
Running. Fury bolted through CJ. “Have you even questioned Banks yet?” She glared at Braddock, wanted him to see the accusation in her eyes. He’d said Banks was on his suspect list, but that told her nothing. “You have to know he did this.”
“We’re still working on tracking him down.”
Was he kidding? That he remained totally calm and utterly rational made her want to scream. He wouldn’t be so damned unfazed if the victim had been a resident of the Twickenham District or the Ledges.
“Until we’ve confirmed cause of death, reviewed any evidence—”
“Banks has always been a bully.” Who did Braddock think he was talking to? CJ had known Banks since he was a snot-nosed kid. “I can’t even tell you the number of times he’s roughed her up. Long before you showed interest in her life,” she added pointedly. “I can see him chasing her down like an animal and then humiliating her by leaving the drug paraphernalia.” Sick bastard.
“CJ”—Braddock used that tone, the one a parent uses when gently scolding a child—“there are certain ordered steps in any investigation. Rest assured—”
“That bastard killed her.” CJ peeled off the gloves. “His arrest is the only step I care about.” With a final, aching look at Shelley, CJ promised to make sure Banks paid.
She was finished here. “Thank you, Dr. Dobbins.” CJ headed for the exit, tossing her gloves in the receptacle near the door. She would find Banks and she would make him tell the truth. He’d lived in the mill village his whole life. Finding him shouldn’t be that difficult.
“CJ,” Braddock called after her.
She didn’t turn around or slow her departure. She had nothing else to say to him. Unfortunately, she understood all too well how this investigation would go—the same way it had gone when her father was shot dead on the sidewalk in front of their house. The same way it went when her mother died of what was labeled an accidental overdose. No one would really investigate the case. Just another dead lowlife from the village.
Good riddance.
Braddock caught up with her in the corridor and fell into step beside her. “I will find and arrest the person responsible for this. But to do that, I need the autopsy results and evidence. Right now we don’t have either.”
CJ stopped and turned to glare at him. “There’s no evidence? What about fingerprints? Hairs? Fibers? You haven’t found anything?”
The resignation on his face gave her the answer even before he spoke. “Unless the body gives us something, we have nothing. No prints, no trace evidence from the scene at all. We’re in the process of a third sweep. We could get lucky. But I’ve never relied on luck to close a case.”
This was insane! “Wait.” CJ should have thought to ask this already. “How long had she . . . been there before she was found?”
“It’s been hot as hell. That escalates things. And, like I said, it rained before her body was discovered.”
CJ held up both hands for him to stop overexplaining. “Just give me the pr
eliminary estimate.”
“Ten to twelve hours, possibly longer.”
CJ had gotten the call from Shelley around two Saturday morning. That meant her sister had been murdered later that morning—well before noon if the preliminary estimate of time of death was accurate.
She should have taken that call. Should have called Shelley back.
Those mental walls she had used to keep her emotions in check shrank around her now, making it impossible to breathe.
CJ couldn’t talk about this anymore. Braddock was saying something to her, but she couldn’t listen.
Not right now.
Right now full-on reality was throttling through her.
Her sister was dead.
The bastard responsible was out there . . . getting away with it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
3:30 PM
Braddock guided his Pontiac G6 onto the shoulder of the road. The strip of Triana Boulevard that ran between Johnson Road and Redstone Arsenal was deserted except for the white forensics van.
He sat there, his hands braced on the steering wheel, his gaze focused on the woods. Images from another wooded area . . . the river . . . another murder flashed one after the other through his mind. Female . . . only nineteen years old.
His fingers tightened on the wheel and his palms started to sweat.
No one fucks with me.
He closed his eyes, exiled the painful visions.
Don’t look back . . . focus on the case. His jaw tightened. Shelley deserved his undivided attention. He had to do this right for her and for CJ—no matter that she hated him now.
With one last glance at the street, he emerged from his vehicle. Don’t let the emotions get in the way.
All he needed was one piece of evidence to connect this homicide to the bastard he wanted more than he wanted to wake up tomorrow.