“What time was this?”
“We left the restaurant around ten, maybe a little after,” she said. “We had been drinking. A lot. And Alex offered to take her home. He was the DD that night. But she said no because she lived so close.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me, Alex and Hollywood.”
“Hollywood?”
“James. Keller,” she clarified, “but everyone calls him Hollywood.”
“And was Hillary seeing Alex?”
“Not really. Not anymore. It’s complicated.”
“I was under the impression they were going to move in together,” I informed her.
“We were,” a voice said from behind me. I turned around to see a man in his early thirties standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. His dark-brown hair was short and gelled back. “I’m Alex,” he said and sat down next to Mary—a little too close for them to be just friends. “I came over here after work when I heard about Hill,” he said. “Hillary and I had talked about moving in together, but it was never serious. And then Mary and I started talking. Things with Hillary just sort of fell apart.” He held Mary’s hand.
“Was it a bad breakup between you two?” I asked, writing down the details of this possible love triangle.
“No,” Mary said. “We were both up front with Hillary. She knew how Alex and I felt about each another. She said she understood, that it didn’t bother her. She said she liked seeing us so happy.” Mary looked at Alex.
“Hillary and I gave it a shot, but we were meant to be just friends,” Alex added. “Besides, Hillary never has a problem finding a date.” Alex smiled.
“Had,” Mary softly corrected him.
“And what about Hollywood?” I asked.
“We drove him home,” Alex answered. “So he was with us until about ten thirty, ten forty-five.”
“Did he and Hillary get along?”
“Yes,” Alex answered quickly. “They were very good friends. He’s quite upset about this.”
“Was Hillary very social? Did she have a lot of friends—perhaps dating someone new?”
“Her relationships didn’t last long. She’s a bit of a free spirit. Was a free spirit,” Alex corrected himself before Mary could.
“Did she have a falling-out with anyone recently? Maybe an ex-boyfriend, someone who took a breakup worse than she did?”
“Not that I can think of.” Mary looked at Alex to confirm. “Hillary was a kind and beautiful soul.”
It was getting to the point that I was struggling to find questions to ask. Alex and Mary weren’t going to be very helpful. Even though Hillary probably was a good person, they were already romanticizing their departed friend. It was typical behavior, especially when the victim was so young. But this interview was leading nowhere.
“Is there anyone at all you can think of who would want to hurt Ms. Palmer?” I followed up.
“No.” Mary shook her head. “Never. Hillary was a great friend to everyone.”
“Okay, one last question. Do you know anyone who drives a Jeep, black or maybe navy blue?” I was beginning to think my only clue wasn’t worth much.
“I don’t think so,” Mary said, looking as if she was scrolling through everyone she knew and trying to remember the types of cars they drove. “I had a silver Jeep a few years ago,” she said and shrugged.
“Okay. Well, thank you for your time.” I stood up and gave them my business card. “In case you think of anything else,” I said and showed myself out.
I couldn’t prove it yet, but I knew in my gut Hillary Palmer’s murder was related to Tammy Davis’s—and, by default, the four others before her. But everywhere I turned seemed to be a dead end. The only real lead we had was from Keegan, the helpful man at the gas station. Had he not seen the young guy buying bleach at his store, I would be even more in the dark than I already was. I had no choice but to start checking off the names on Tammy Davis’s cell phone records—starting with Alison Rhodes.
Chapter Five
It was nearly a quarter ’til eight, and the sun was starting to set. The address for Alison Rhodes was on the other side of town from Mary Duran’s. The half-hour drive gave me time to prepare myself for worst-case scenarios. I knew I was looking at Ali’s potential involvement through crime-colored lens, but that’s what a good detective is supposed to do. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Deep down, I knew the truth: that was I was looking for any possible excuse to cancel my date with her so I could go on living my boring life.
As I pulled my car along the curb of the last address on my list, I saw a familiar red truck with a rainbow sticker on the bumper. This was definitely Ali’s place. The house’s gray stucco had been freshly painted. There were two bay windows, one on either side of the mahogany front door, which was outlined in white trim. I walked up the three cement steps that led to her tiny front porch and knocked five times, something we learned in the academy. Three knocks were too pleasant; five knocks meant business.
I stood to the left of the door and kept my head down as I listened for her footsteps. I knocked another five times and waited almost a full minute before deciding to give up. There was no probable cause to go inside. She wasn’t a person of interest—although I was interested in her. But the way I was interested in her wouldn’t hold up in court.
As I walked down her porch steps and made my way through her front yard toward my car, I heard her door behind me open.
“Lacey?”
“Hey, Ali,” I replied as I turned to face her. She looked as if she’d been crying all day.
“I think I know why you’re here,” she said and opened the door wider. “Come inside.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I only need a minute of your time.”
Ali walked onto the porch and stood near the door. She was wearing jeans and a baby-blue T-shirt, her long blonde hair tied back in a loose braid. Her eyes were puffy and red. I took a step forward so she could hear my questions more clearly.
“Did you know Tammy Davis?”
“Yes,” she answered as her eyes filled with tears.
“How did you know her?”
“She was supposed to be my date the other night.” She sighed. “Guess I know why she stood me up.” She forced an awkward smile.
“Did you see her on Friday night?” I asked, trying to maintain my professionalism.
“I did. She left the restaurant around nine o’clock.”
“Did you two have a fight?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t a good first date by any means, but we didn’t fight. We made plans to go out again.”
“To Denim on Sunday, right?” I paused, knowing I should have let her tell me rather than answering the question for her.
“That’s right,” she said. “I asked her to text me when she got home Friday, but she never did.” Ali paused—presumably because she realized the reason Tammy Davis never texted her was that Tammy Davis never made it home on Friday. “I obviously hadn’t heard from her during the weekend, so I just went to Denim on Sunday to meet her as planned. I didn’t know she was the person the police found at Vantage Woods until yesterday when her name was announced.”
“Do you mind coming down to the station to answer a few more questions?” I watched her gaze drift behind me and then she slowly nodded her head. “You can ride with me,” I offered.
“I can drive myself,” she said.
“Um, actually, I have to drive you in,” I whispered, breaking character. “Are you free now?”
“Oh, right, because I might flee.” As the logic clicked, she started to laugh. “Yeah, I can go now.” She walked back inside her house for a few seconds and came back out holding her keys. “How long will it take?”
“It depends. Usually people are out within a few hours.” I walked her over to my Jetta and opened the passenger door for her and waited for her to get in before I closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
; “Will you be doing the interview?” she asked as I started the car and drove forward.
“No,” I replied. “But I can watch if you’d like.” She nodded slowly. She didn’t seem too worried about the questions she might be asked. I wasn’t sure if that was good sign or a bad one.
Once at the station, I walked her into the interview room and told her to have a seat at the table. She scanned the room, likely comparing it to an interrogation room she had seen on whatever crime show she might’ve watched most recently. The small room had all the basics: a metal table, a single chair on one side with two chairs on the other, a video camera, and a one-way mirror on the wall.
“I’ll be right in there,” I said, pointing to the room on the other side of the mirror. “Detective Sean Braxton will be in shortly.”
“Thanks,” she politely responded and sat with her hands folded on the table as she waited. I closed the door behind me and moved into the area behind the glass.
After a few minutes, Detective Braxton walked in and immediately sat down on one of the two chairs on the other side of Ali. He introduced himself and told her he was going to be recording the conversation. His prematurely balding forehead, which made him look older than he really was, reflected the sterile lighting above them. Ali nodded silently, and the detective began his interview.
“For the record, will you please state that you know this conversation is being recorded?” he said after pressing the “record” button.
“I know this conversation is being recorded,” Ali said, sitting up straighter and leaning closer to the camera.
“Can I have your full name please?”
“Alison Renee Rhodes.”
“And what’s today’s date?”
“It’s July first,” she said and leaned back slightly in her chair.
I watched Braxton take note of where Ali aimed her eyes as she answered. Bishop had taught us early on how to watch for visual and nonverbal cues from witnesses and suspects to help determine whether they were lying. When the eyes moved up and to the right, it indicated that the person was using the creative side of the brain—the side that’s used to fabricate a story. So by asking Ali a simple question that required a straightforward answer, Braxton could establish a reference point for where her eyes tended to land when she was telling the truth.
“Good,” Braxton said. “Why don’t you tell me in your own words what brings you here today?”
“Um…” Ali glanced to her right, toward the mirror, then back to Detective Braxton. “I was with Tammy Davis the night she was killed, but I didn’t do it.”
“Tell me everything you can remember about that night. No detail is too small.” For a brief moment, Braxton smirked, perhaps hoping to hear some sordid detail from Ali’s date. But what his little grin also told me was that he didn’t think she was guilty either.
“Tammy met me at Pariah’s, a restaurant near Vantage Woods, on Friday around seven o’clock,” she said. “I had fettuccini Alfredo, and she had a salad. We split a bottle of wine and just talked.” She shrugged at the simplicity of her date. “She left around nine, and I never heard from her again.” I watched the direction of Ali’s eyes. They went up and to her left, indicating she was visually recalling the image of what they had to eat on Friday night.
“What did you two talk about?” Detective Braxton asked, coaxing her for more information to see if she was manufacturing her story.
“I don’t know, normal stuff—work, family, where we’ve traveled,” she answered. Ali and I had talked about almost all of those same things when I saw her at Denim the other night. “We were struggling for conversation. We didn’t have much in common,” she added.
“Were you two physical on your date?” Braxton asked.
“Physical?” She paused. “Oh,” she scoffed. “No,” she answered firmly. Her eyes remained locked on Braxton. I felt a sense of relief that her eyes didn’t move anywhere. There was nothing sexual about Tammy for Ali to visually remember.
“Did you make plans to see each other again?” he asked.
“We did.”
“Tell me. If it wasn’t a good date, why did you agree to see her again?”
It was a legitimate question.
“To give it another chance,” she said. “We were both just really nervous, I think.” She glanced toward the mirror again—and although I knew it was impossible, I felt like we locked eyes for a moment.
“Why didn’t you come to us sooner?” Detective Braxton asked.
“I didn’t know what to say. I don’t have an alibi for Friday night. She left at nine, and I finished the rest of the wine and went home.”
“What kind of wine was it?”
“Moscato,” she answered, giving him a perplexed look.
“Did she give you any indication that someone might want to hurt her?” He scooted his chair away from the table so he could lean back.
“No,” she answered. “Nothing like that.”
“She didn’t mention any enemies or if she owed anyone money? Drugs, maybe?”
“No, not that I’m aware of. And she seemed pretty sober to me.” Ali glanced to her right again. “I want to help you. I do. But I don’t really have any information about her life beyond polite conversation.”
“How did you two meet?”
“At the farmer’s market earlier in the week. She bumped into me with her cart and stopped to apologize. We just started talking.”
“Okay, Mrs. Rhodes. Thank you. I think that’s all for now.”
“Ms. Rhodes,” she corrected him and looked toward the mirror. “I’m not married.”
“Okay, Miss Rhodes,” he emphasized. “Do you have any upcoming vacations or travel plans that would require you to be out of state?”
“No,” she said and gave him a defensive stare.
“We may have follow-up questions,” he said. “If we do, will you be around to answer them?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Can I go now?”
“Yes, you may. Unless you have anything you’d like to add?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“This is Detective Sean Braxton concluding the interview with Alison Rhodes,” he said before pressing “stop” on the camera. “I’ll show you to the lobby.” He opened the door to the interview room. “Do you have a ride home?”
“I can take her,” I offered. She seemed relieved to know I had stuck around.
The drive back to her house was less awkward than the drive to the station. I didn’t mention the interview—partly because I knew I couldn’t discuss it with her, mostly because I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable about the situation. But she seemed to be relatively at ease about the whole thing.
To me, though, something felt off about that dinner. I didn’t realize what it was until I pulled into her driveway.
“Fettuccini Alfredo?” I asked. “That’s not good first-date food,” I said, hoping she would get my hint that a heavy pasta dish wouldn’t exactly make a woman feel up for any type of sexual activity afterward.
“Like I said,” she smiled, “it wasn’t a good first date.”
She opened the passenger door, maintaining eye contact with me. “Thanks for taking me home,” she said. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
Chapter Six
In the three days that followed Hillary Palmer’s murder, little turned up to help solve it. Her toxicology report came back with high amounts of alcohol, which was expected because her friends said they had been drinking heavily that night. Her blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit. So if she had decided to stumble home, she would have been easy prey.
The coroner didn’t find any traces of bleach on her skin like he did with Tammy Davis. And, unlike Tammy Davis and the four women before her, Hillary Palmer was in a more public area. Although she was still close to Vantage Woods, Hillary’s murder didn’t seem planned. Aside from her death occurring just outside the same restaurant where Ali had had dinner with Tammy Davis a few nights bef
ore, it appeared that Hillary Palmer’s murder was more out of convenience; the killer saw an opportunity and took it.
The officers’ digging through the Dumpsters in the alley where her body was found turned out to be time well spent. The officers found a piece of wood buried beneath bags of garbage and other restaurant debris. It looked like it had been broken off a crate. It was nearly three feet long and manageable enough to swing like a bat. It had dark residue on the tip. When tested, it came back as a positive match for Hillary’s blood type. So at least we had one of the murder weapons in our possession, but we weren’t lucky enough to find any prints on it—and we didn’t find the knife he used to stab her.
Bishop called the first-shift police officers, along with Detective Braxton and myself, into one of the station’s vacant offices for an updated briefing. Bishop was using this empty office as his makeshift conference room. It had been vacated by the sergeant of our division when she decided to quit due to the stress of the job—and Braxton had been gunning for the position since it opened six weeks ago.
Once inside, Bishop asked me to close the door and turn off the lights before I took a seat in the middle row. There were at least a dozen police officers crammed into the room, most of whom stood silently along the perimeter of the space.
“Crystal Yui,” Bishop said from the podium at the front of the room. He turned on the projector and aimed it at the cinderblock. On the wall was a photograph of the first victim we found sixteen months ago. Her face was pale and almost blue from her body having been exposed to the cold temperatures overnight. Damp leaves and broken twigs were stuck in her long black hair. “Age twenty-three. Asian-American female. Originally from Chicago, she was here studying psychology. She was the first victim we found, in March of last year. Her body was left in plain sight. Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head, most likely a small-caliber bullet fired from a distance.”
He clicked to the next slide. “Second body, found in July of last year, four months after we found Crystal Yui’s body. Amy Temple, age thirty-two. African-American female. She frequented the Villa at Vantage Woods to score drugs. Again, the body was left in plain sight, and the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head, likely fired from a distance.”
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