by Vella Day
Derek tossed his cell on the passenger's seat and sped down the tree-lined street. His fingers gripped the wheel too tight, and he overcorrected on the first bend, nearly clipping an oncoming car. A horn blared.
His sister couldn't be dead. There had to be a mistake. Billy was wrong. He had to be.
Derek turned the truck's AC on high, hoping the cool air would clear his head. After what seemed like an endless drive, he pulled in front of Rayne's house, hoping Billy might be playing a sick joke on him, something he'd done many times before. Unfortunately, the flashing ambulance lights confirmed the worst.
The call was real.
His muscles tightened as adrenaline shot to his heart, and a metallic taste tinged his tongue.
He cut the engine a second before another police car came to a stop behind him. A few neighbors stood outside their doors gawking, apparently not willing to miss out on the chaos.
Derek jumped out of his truck and raced up the drive. Oh, man. There was the pile of lumber he'd placed at the side of her house that he'd promised Rayne he'd build a new porch with. She'd bugged him for weeks to begin the project. This weekend he'd planned to start.
A lump caught in his throat as he swiped a hand across his eyes. She couldn't be gone.
Before he reached the front door, Officer Juan Sosa escorted Derek's nephew outside.
“Billy?” Derek scanned the boy from head to toe to make sure he too hadn't been injured.
His nephew looked up at him, his eyes red, his shoulders slumped. “Mom's d...dead.” He hiccupped and his whole body shook, tearing Derek up inside.
Derek rushed forward and drew Billy to his chest, but his nephew didn't hug back, as giant sobs erupted from Billy's thin body.
Darkness clouded his brain as tears trickled down his own cheeks, and Derek grasped onto Billy for support.
His nephew pushed away and wiped the tears from his face. “Why did she do it? Why did she have to kill herself?” His lower lip trembled.
“I-I don't know.” Derek's voice faded with the last word. “I need to see her.” To make sure there wasn't something he could do.
Officer Sosa placed a hand on Billy's back. “Come on, son. Let's sit in the car. I'd like to ask you some more questions.” He nodded to Derek as he escorted Billy to the patrol car.
Derek rushed inside Rayne's house and froze. His sister's lifeless body was on the floor in a pool of blood, and his gaze went to the gun in her hand.
His gun. His Glock. Suicide: the worse crime he could imagine.
Guilt swamped him. He shouldn't have lent the weapon to her, but she'd insisted.
A paramedic kneeling beside Rayne looked up and shook his head.
Derek nearly lost his morning bagel as a wave of depression, dark and heavy, nearly drowned him. He reached out to grab the table near the entrance to keep from losing his balance, and then fumbled for his sage packet.
“The child is his mother's son.”
Derek spun around to see who'd spoken, but no one was there. Had his spiritual guides reached out to him? Or had he imagined the unearthly sounding words?
“Sir, are you all right?” the paramedic asked.
Derek turned back to the man kneeling on the floor. “I'm fine.” Like hell he was. It took all he had to keep his voice even. He swallowed hard. “Have you determined time of death?”
“You'll have to wait for the medical examiner.”
He knew that.
As if by magic, his long-time friend and Assistant ME, John Ayo, came in with his gear, followed by the CSU team, headed by Carson Stepping. The team, all dressed in white, looked like angels coming to claim their victim.
When both men offered their condolences, all Derek could do was nod at their offered sympathy.
He studied the position of Rayne's body. Despite the evidence before him, no way would she have taken her own life.
Ayo knelt down beside her and examined Rayne with a gentleness and thoroughness Derek appreciated. The doctor wrote detailed notes and took scrapings from her scalp and under her nails. He then helped direct one of the CSU techs taking photos of the body.
Minutes seemed like hours. Wanting to ask him to hurry, Derek nearly bit his tongue. The large black man didn't seem to notice his need to know.
Derek scanned the dining room. Nothing was broken. Nothing had been disturbed. There hadn't been an apparent attack, and his body nearly caved at the lack of foul play.
After what must have been at least half an hour, Derek's impatience got the best of him. “Do you have a fix on the time of death yet?”
Ayo let out a long breath and sat back on his haunches. “If I had to guess from the rigor, I'd say about twelve hours ago. Look here.” John pulled Rayne's body toward him and pointed to the back of her neck. “See the lividity pattern? The bruising shows she died here.”
Had he expected she'd been killed elsewhere, and then dumped back at her house? He could only hope. Suicide and Rayne were incomprehensible together.
Stepping's team continued to photograph the scene, while another woman he'd never met pulled out her tape measure and took careful measurements of the body's position in relation to the room.
When a hand grabbed his arm, Derek jerked.
“You can't stay here any longer, Derek.” It was Sosa. “This is a crime scene.”
He was well aware of the rules. He wanted to stay; wanted to make sure the team did everything they could to prove someone had killed his sister.
His friend tugged on his arm again. Time's up. Derek took one final look at the tragedy, turned, and followed his fellow cop outside. The sun's rays beat down on his face, and the air was unusually calm, as if nothing sinister had happened inside.
Miraculously, the neighbors had disappeared, almost as if the President has issued a nuclear bomb warning. Billy's face was pressed against the cruiser's window looking lost, and Derek's heart broke. Again.
He wanted to shut his eyes and pretend when he opened them, the nightmare would be over, that Rayne would drive in and laugh at the practical joke, and Billy would race by on his skateboard doing dumb-ass tricks like Derek used to do when he was Billy's age.
But he knew this horror was all too real.
Convinced Billy held the key to Rayne's death, Derek approached the squad car. Before he reached his nephew, the front door opened behind him.
“Benally,” the familiar voice called.
Derek turned. Detective Seinkievitz, the primary on the case, motioned him inside. Glancing back at Billy, he held up his hand to indicate he'd be right back and followed the detective inside.
“Did you find something?” Derek clenched his fists at his side.
“Yup.”
**
Kelly Rutland frowned when her door chimed out the first few beats of Send My Regards to Broadway. She'd just arrived home from having breakfast with a friend and wanted nothing more than to get out of her sticky clothes and take a shower.
With one hand on the doorknob, she looked through the peephole and forgot about the shower.
Two policemen stood back from the entrance. Heart pounding, she unlocked the door, and as soon as opened it, warm moist air smacked her in the face.
“Doctor Kelly Rutland?” a female officer asked.
Their cruiser sat in her drive. The officer's rigid stance made her muscles tighten. “Yes?” She swallowed hard.
“I'm Officer Carranza and this is my partner, Officer Oxtal. May we come in?” Both officers showed their badges. The male cop reminded her of Ichabod Crane while the female looked like a much younger version of the cop on that 80's TV show, Cagney and Lacy.
“Sure.” This must be bad. Really, really bad.
They followed her to the living room. “I think you'd better sit down,” Officer Oxtal said, sounding like the funeral director who'd buried her dad.
Kelly's legs nearly buckled. “What's happened?” Ugly, sludgy dread moved through her veins as she dropped into the nearest chair.
The two officers remained standing, backs ramrod straight, and for one hysterical moment, she wondered if they were getting ready for inspection or a firing squad. They said nothing. Jesus, why didn't they answer her? “Tell me what happened.”
Finally, the Cagney look-alike took a step forward and twisted her fingers into a knot, her eyes full of sympathy. “I'm really sorry to have to tell you, but your sister, Stefanie –”
Kelly's vision blurred, and her breath caught in her throat. Not Stefanie. No!
“Was in a fatal car wreck last night,” the cop finished.
“That can't be!” Kelly shot out of the chair as a giant sob caught in her throat. “I don't believe you. St-Stef can't be—” She couldn't say the word. Couldn't even think it.
These people were lying. Stef would walk through the door any minute now and—
“I'm sorry,” Officer Oxtal said.
Kelly grabbed her stomach to calm the sharp jabbing in her abdomen. “How? When?” A gush of tears poured down her cheeks as a low keening sound came out of her mouth. “Nooo. It can't be.” Kelly swiped a hand under her eyes, but the flow of tears wouldn't stop.
“The roads were pretty slick last night. From the length of the skid marks on the pavement, she was going close to ninety when her car flipped over a guardrail on the Crosstown Expressway. I'm very sorry.”
His eyes spoke the truth—a truth that clawed at her heart. Kelly wanted Stef next to her, warm, happy, alive.
Another piercing stab shot straight to her belly. God, this couldn't be true. She sniffled, but her crying wouldn't cease. “Was she run...run off the road? Was another car involved?” The eyes of the officers never changed. She hadn't misunderstood. “There's no way she'd be speeding unless someone was chasing her.” An evil darkness slid down her spine, taking her breath away.
“We're still investigating.”
Kelly raced to the kitchen counter and grabbed a handful of tissues. She blew her nose and swiped her cheeks clean, but the ache continued to gnaw at her. With her arms wrapped tightly around her waist, she headed back to the sofa. She stopped short, and then spun toward them. “What time was the accident?” She needed facts. Needed the focus. Needed anything except for this awful biting pain.
She reached up and whipped off her ponytail holder, the band's constraint oppressive.
“The medical examiner put time of death at approximately eight thirty last night.”
“Last night? Why didn't you notify me earlier?”
His gaze dropped to the floor for a split second. “We couldn't find any ID on her. At least at first. Her cell had wedged under the front seat. Once we located it, we called the last number, but it went to voicemail.”
Her mind ceased to function for a moment, the horror too much to bear. Voicemail? Oh, God. She'd turned off her cell right after she spoke with Stef. “I... I did speak with her on the phone around eight. I asked her to go see a movie with me, but she...she said she was on her way to visit a friend who wasn't feeling well.” Kelly swallowed the lump in her throat.
The policeman pulled out his pad, and her gaze followed his movements. His fingernails needed cleaning, and his right thumbnail was jagged.
“Do you know the name of this friend?” he asked in a robotic monotone.
Agony squeezed her heart as Kelly shot her gaze to his expressionless face. “No. Yes. I —” God, she couldn't think. Her mind refused to focus. She rubbed her forehead with her palm. Then the name came to her, as it had from Stef's mouth many times. “Rayne Anderson. She's a trial attorney in town.”
“Rain? As in R-A-I-N?” His pen hovered above his pad—a gnarly, tooth bitten pen. His brows pointed southward.
“No.” She was losing her mind. She never noticed quirky details like dirty, chipped fingernails or chomped-on pens. Maybe she'd entered some alternate reality and Stef wasn't really dead. Maybe all of this was an illusion caused by heat exhaustion.
“Ma’am?”
She looked up at his expectant face. Reality slammed into her again. “No. That's not right.”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
Stick to the facts. “I think she spells it, R-A-Y-N-E.”
He jotted down the information before glancing up. “Perhaps your sister was running late and driving too fast for the wet conditions.”
“That's bullshit! My sister would never drive that fast.”
“Ma'am—”
“Oh, no.” Bile raced up her throat as she fumbled for the chair for support and slid down.
“What is it?” The cop took a slight step forward. This time he sounded less like a robot and more like a human who cared.
Danger and Desire, Book 2
Danger and Desire
Copyright © 2018 by Vella Day
www.velladay.com
[email protected]
Published in the United States of America
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief questions embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Second chances are great until a killer comes between them.
Homicide detective, Derek Benally, thought his day couldn’t get any worse after he spent all night processing a murder, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. The phone call from his nephew telling him Derek’s sister is dead unravels him.
Dr. Kelly Rutland is on the verge of a cancer breakthrough when she receives the horrifying news that her sister was in a fatal car accident. The cops ruled it accidental, but Kelly refuses to believe it was anything other than murder. She’s determined to do whatever it takes to find the killer.
When Derek learns the woman he had never stopped loving has moved back to town, and that both of their sisters died on the same night, he reconnects with her. Little does he realize that seeing her again will send the killer in Kelly’s direction.
1
Tampa Florida Homicide detective Derek Benally slammed his cruiser’s door and scanned the crime scene. Streetlights along the I-275 entrance ramp flooded the main street. He ducked under the tape, his gray police issue, t-shirt plastered against his back. Damned humidity.
Cars honked on the busy thoroughfare and gas fumes mingled with the fishy smell of the bay, adding a measure of unpleasantness to what had already become an unpleasant night.
He halted at the scene and flashed his badge. The two officers guarding the body stepped back. The jumper lay broken on the concrete in front of the thirty-story Waters Edge Condominium. Derek looked up at the surrounding balconies, and his gut soured at the man’s violent death.
Loosely covered by a bloodstained sheet, a hand and a foot stuck out at odd angles. Derek knelt next to the victim and studied the blood spatter that extended a good two feet to the street side of the body. Another nine inches and the vic would have soiled the stone fountain. Wouldn’t the rich condo owners have had a fit over that desecration?
He shoved his hand in his pocket, squeezed his sage packet, and closed his eyes to center himself, to separate his logical mind from his emotions. He waited to learn if his spiritual guides would send down a hint about what had happened.
A low rumble grumbled in the sky. Could it be them? Anticipation sped up his pulse.
Flashes from the crowd broke his concentration—or had his guides cut the connection? Damn curiosity seekers. He needed help from above.
Did these gawkers actually think a photo of a covered body would satisfy them? Brain matter had oozed out from under than dead man’s head, and from the bloody protrusion of the right femur, the victim’s leg had been crushed in the fall. If they ever had an up-close look at a real dead body, th
ey’d be sorry. They only looked good on TV.
He swatted away the bugs that landed around his eyes and nose. When one little bugger began feasting on his arm, he flicked the insect away.
Derek lifted the sheet covering the white male, careful not to touch the body. What a waste. Even after nine years on the force, he didn’t like seeing the gruesome effect blunt force trauma had on someone.
He studied the building’s balconies, trying to figure out why the body had come to rest so far from the condo? Assuming the man stepped off the balcony and hadn’t leaped off the railing like a cliff diver, the victim should have landed closer to the entrance, not out by the road.
Given the body’s location, suicide didn’t seem to be cause of his death. Perhaps the man had been pushed. His pulse sped up at the emotional pain this man must have experienced, and the implication of a possible murder prickled his skin.
Cars honked at the slowdown clogging the Interstate onramp in front of the condo. Damn rubberneckers.
Before Derek could make more mental calculations, Gonzalez, a new recruit, who had been the first on the scene, hovered over him.
Derek stood and looked down at the short, stocky officer. The young cop looked like a puppy dog—eager to please and happy to have to a job. Ah, to be twenty-one again.
“The doorman ID’d him as Carl Vanderwall of condo 2104,” the puppy cop said. “Given the location, I called the Captain.” He puffed out his chest.
“And?”
The officer’s baby-browns shot down to the sidewalk. “The Captain told me to tell you not to hassle the tenants too much.” His voice faded at the last few words.
Derek bristled. He wanted to stop any speculation, especially since Gonzalez was new to the force. “I’ve never strong-armed anyone into talking.”
The officer looked up with eyes wide and held up two hands. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. He also said to remind you the Mayor lives in this high rise.”