by N. M. Brown
When they arrived back in the city, Annie was desperate to catch up with Lena. Leighton dropped her off on the condition that both girls would come to his house for supper the following evening. Annie had agreed, but only on the condition that the dinner included a couple of pizzas and some tubs of overpriced ice cream. Despite stating that she was pushing her luck, Leighton agreed to his daughter’s demands.
Half an hour later, having entered his home carrying a bulging bag of trash from the car, Leighton closed the front door with his foot. He put his burden down and crossed the room to discover that somebody had left a message on his answer machine. He knelt on the floor by the coffee table, lifted the handset and pressed the flashing button. An automated voice told him there was one missed call, then played the message:
‘Hey, Jonesy, its Wendy, give me a call at the station when you get this. I’m on until six.’
Leighton stood up and punched the station number into the phone handset, holding it to his ear. As it rang, he wandered into the kitchen where he had placed his trash bag next to the waste paper bin. After three rings, the phone was answered.
‘Oceanside Police Station, how may we help you?’ asked a cheery voice.
‘Wendy?’ Leighton said tentatively.
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Leighton Jones. What’s up?’
‘Ah, Jonesy, there was a message left here for you. Give me a second.’
‘Couldn’t it wait until next week? I don’t often get updates at home.’
‘Yeah, I know, sorry about that.’
‘Hey, its fine, I’m just teasing. What was the call?’ Leighton tried to swap the phone to his other hand but winced against the pain in his upper arm. He cradled the phone between one of shoulders and his ear as he opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of beer.
‘You’re the main topic of conversation down here at the station, you know?’
‘Yeah?’ Leighton frowned.
‘Some people are saying that Gretsch knew nothing about your investigation, but he’s having to take the credit just to help him move up to chief.’
‘Well, I’m just happy to help out such a nice guy.’ Leighton chuckled.
‘Yeah right. Okay, the message was from a girl,’ Wendy continued, ‘she was real insistent about speaking to you. I mean real insistent, so I told her that you were off duty for the weekend, but she wouldn’t let up.’
‘What did she say?’ Leighton asked.
‘She said to tell you that “she’s ready”. That’s all – no name or other words – just “she’s ready”. Does that make any sense to you?’
‘Yes.’ Leighton smiled to himself. ‘Yes it does, thank you, Wendy.’
‘Okay, well that’s you updated, Officer. Have a good Sunday night, Jonesy. When you back in the madhouse?’
‘Tuesday,’ Leighton said.
‘Well, I guess I might see you at the coffee machine,’ Wendy said, ‘if it’s a slow shift.’
‘Not had one of them in quite a while,’ Leighton said, laughing.
‘We must all live in hope, Jonesy,’ she said, and hung up.
Leighton carried the phone and his bottle of beer out onto his porch, where he pulled out a steel garden chair and sat down. As he took in the dramatic sunset, , he held the beer between his knees, twisted off the cap with his right hand and took a sip. It was cold and tasted clean. Taking a deep breath, he allowed himself to inflate, holding on to the breath momentarily, before breathing out and feeling himself relax. It was another trick he had picked up from the grief counselling sessions, that, and focusing on helping to make a positive difference to the lives of those around him. Leighton had never been much of a believer in his ability to influence others, but sometimes the world still had the potential to throw him a curveball.
‘She’s ready,’ he said with a smile.
It was a warm evening and a 747, leaving Oceanside Municipal Airport, whined overhead, leaving a faint white line like a scratch in the orange Californian sky.
Epilogue
By the time he turned his car onto Fenwick Avenue, Leighton had been up and busy for a couple of hours. It had been difficult getting back behind the wheel of his car again, but he had been determined to make this trip. Straight after breakfast he had driven across the city to Oceanside Rehab centre, where he spoke to a relaxed counsellor called David, and made arrangements for Rochelle to enter into a six-week programme. It was, thankfully, a free service, but Leighton had wanted to drop off some money to cover anything she might need during her stay.
He explained to David that he didn’t want Rochelle to know, otherwise she might have mistaken Leighton’s support for charity – something he felt she would not welcome. However, neither did he want to simply give her the cash – just in case she slipped back into an old habit. He figured he would simply tell her that the centre would provide any clothing or personal items she might need.
Following his visit to the centre, Leighton made a brief trip to the shopping mall just off Vista Way, before heading back to collect Rochelle.
Driving toward toward her apartment, Leighton was puzzled to see two black and white patrol cars and an ambulance parked at random angles in the street outside it. Some locals – teenagers mainly – were pressing excitedly against the yellow crime scene tape as if they were trying to get into a concert.
Leighton felt his stomach lurch as he pulled the car to a stop and clambered out. Pushing his way through the crowd of eager onlookers, he was jostled until he ducked under the tape and stepped onto the grubby concrete steps that lead to her door. After pulling out his badge, he knocked on the door with a hand that was visibly shaking. It was opened by a patrol officer, who Leighton vaguely recognised.
‘Hey, Jonesy, isn’t it? I saw you on TV – good work on the Black Mountain ranch shit. What you doing here? I thought they said you were working traffic?’
‘Yeah,’ Leighton said, and tried to disguise his unease. ‘I am. I was just passing and saw the black and whites. What’s happened here?’
‘A local hooker,’ the officer said, glancing over his shoulder to where Rochelle’s lifeless body was lying on the kitchen floor. She appeared to be dressed in her best clothing, as if she had wanted to make a good first impression at the rehab centre. ‘Looks like she was killed by her addict boyfriend, or pimp. There was a small suitcase half packed on the bed, so we figured she was possibly planning to leave him.’
‘How did she die?’ Leighton felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.
‘A fatal stabbing. Hey, you okay, man?’ the rookie asked.
‘I had a rough night, I just need a coffee.’ Leighton lied. ‘Did anyone ID the victim?’
‘Sure. She is …’ the officer said as he pulled out a notepad from his chest pocket, ‘Ms Rochelle Grace Wilson – according to the bills piled around the place. A neighbour said she heard the guy show up, banging on the door, early this morning. She said the victim was a hooker. The guy was apparently yelling about some drugs, and trying to bust the door in.’
‘Was the neighbour the one who called it in?’ Leighton asked.
‘Yeah, when we pulled up outside, the boyfriend was already in the house. The victim was lying there, cold on the kitchen floor, and the guy was sitting next to her, eating a bowl of oatmeal. My partner Marty kicked in the door and warned the guy, but the asshole made a grab for a knife. He told us to stay out of his business or he’d put us in the ground. Thought he was Rambo. The asshole took three shots in the chest before he went down; he must’ve been high on some shit.’
‘Jeez.’ Leighton nodded, trying to avoid looking at Rochelle’s lifeless body. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘No, thanks, the lab guys will be here soon, then I guess it’s all just waste disposal from here. “Clean the whore off the floor”, as they say.’
Leighton paused, half turned to go, and turned back around. ‘You married?’ he asked the officer.
‘What?’ The younger man
seemed momentarily knocked off balance.
‘You got a wife? Girlfriend? I presume you do, right?’ Leighton continued.
‘Yeah, sure,’ the officer said with a shrug of his shoulders.
‘You got any kids?’ Leighton asked.
‘Yeah – two. One of each.’ The officer grinned at some memory of his children’s craziness.
‘Well, that murdered girl, lying back there on the kitchen floor, is someone’s daughter. Just as important as your own little princess, maybe even more so, because whilst your kids will grow up in a nice neighbourhood, with loving parents and a happy life, that girl lying on the floor got a shit life at the hands of shit men. So right now, she deserves to be treated with some dignity, probably for the first time in her short fucking life.’
‘Jeez,’ the officer said, as he looped his thumbs into his belt defensively. ‘Preach much?’
Leighton said nothing, just turned and walked back toward toward the fluttering police tape and the sea of eager onlookers. His hand reached into his jacket pocket for his car keys and found something else. Although it was a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture, his finger touched the small plastic dice and curled around it as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
‘Hey,’ the young officer called after Leighton from the doorway of the murder scene, ‘don’t get so worked up about it, Jonesy – she was just another hooker, right? Right?’
As he climbed back into his car, started the engine, and stared through his windshield, Leighton wasn’t looking at the crowd of ghouls , or at the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. He wasn’t even looking at the grubby little apartment in which his friend had been cruelly murdered. Instead, Leighton was looking at a different future: one where Rochelle had somehow escaped her confinement and found the life she deserved. He could imagine her, having got cleaned up, living in a neat little house somewhere in Minnesota, where the walnut trees were tall and green and the air was fresh.
As he used the palm of his hand to wipe the hot tears from his eyes, Leighton deliberately avoided glancing sideways at the bag of neatly pressed and folded clothes, which sat on the passenger seat of his car. They were only clothes after all.
But perhaps more upsetting for him were the two books that he had carefully placed beside the clothes – a cookery book of Fresh Pasta Sauces for Beginners and a hardback edition of The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Leighton, still struggling with the row of painful stitches in his upper arm, grunted as he put the car into gear. He gripped the steering wheel and began to drive slowly out of Fenwick Avenue. He kept his eyes straight ahead as he turned his car away from the street on which Rochelle had lived - for a short time, and drove off to face another day in Oceanside.
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Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to Betsy and the team at Bloodhound Books for their commitment and support. Thanks also to Richard Laird for giving me the benefit of his experience in law enforcement.
Copyright © 2019 N.M. Brown
The right of N.M. Brown to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Created with Vellum
For my wife…
Introduction
Note: These events take place ten years before Carpenter Road and twenty years before The Girl on the Bus
Prologue
Tina Blanchette let the battered screen door clatter shut behind her as she carefully made her way down the four white stone stairs leading from the porch to the yard. She had to move slowly and watch each step because she was carrying her favourite Barbie doll and a selection of well-used accessories, including a yellow plastic poodle attached to a small lead.
At age seven, Tina desperately wanted to have had a real dog of her own just like her cousin Theo had, but because her mom said they couldn’t – owing to the size of their modest home – having a pretend pet for Barbie was the next best thing. Tina had got it the previous Christmas and had slept with it beneath her pillow ever since. The dog even came with a small pink feeding bowl and a tiny plastic bone, but Tina never took those things outside when she was playing in her own or Suzy’s neighbouring yard. They were simply too small, and she had learned from experience that small things could be easily lost among the tangled blades of grass.
Tina’s modest home was located in a small cluster of sun-bleached houses which flanked a long ribbon of road between Oceanside and Barstow. Most of the buildings were single storey bungalows painted in muted pastel colours.
As Tina stepped away from her home, the heat on that afternoon made the road appear to ripple as if it was being viewed through a rainy window. But there was no rain here – just heat and dust. The sky above her was clear and the Californian air was tinged with the sweet muskiness of the wildfires that had been plaguing the San Diego area all summer. Tina secretly really liked the smell in the air – it reminded her of a time when her dad had still been around and he made a bonfire on the beach; Tina’s mom hated the smell. She complained that it seeped into the clean washing.
Having safely navigated the steps, Tina – wearing a pair of faded jean shorts and an orange T-shirt – hurried past two other houses and eventually stopped outside a front yard where a slightly smaller girl was sitting on the parched ground playing intently with a similar doll to Tina’s.
‘Hey Suzy,’ Tina said as she pushed through the creaking wooden gate in the waist high wall that hemmed in the small dusty yard.
‘Hi,’ Suzy said without looking up from the complicated pleat she was tying in the golden hair of her own plastic doll. Suzy was dressed in jean dungarees and had three streaks of white sunscreen on her face. It looked like war paint from some long forgotten battle.
‘Look what my Aunt Joan gave me,’ Suzy said as she pointed one small hand towards the steps of her own porch where a large cardboard box sat on the bottom step.
‘What is it?’ Tina asked.
‘A bunch of my cousin’s old toys,’ Suzy said indifferently. ‘But some of them are busted,’ she added with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. ‘Last year she gave me Mousetrap but most of the pieces were broken and nobody could fix it. We just threw it in the trash can. My mom said Aunt Joan could’ve done that herself.’
Whilst Suzy concentrated on twisting the strands of synthetic hairs together, Tina stepped across the parched lawn to examine t
he mysterious arrival. Somebody had used a red marker pen to scrawl the name Jackie – Suzy’s mother – on the side of the box.
‘Wow, there’s lots of stuff here,’ Tina said as she began rummaging through the variety of brightly coloured plastic objects.
‘I know,’ Suzy said without turning around. ‘My mom brought it back from Reno last night. She said that some bits are broken, so she doesn’t want me to take them all into the house.’
‘Why?’ Tina asked.
‘She says we have enough junk of our own already. I’ve to take out anything I want to keep, then the rest is going in the trash.’
‘Hey, look at this!’ Tina called.