by Vella Day
Like he gave a rat’s ass. Derek nodded toward the balcony. “Anyone see him jump?”
Gonzalez motioned toward two teenaged girls sitting in the police car at the side of the building, away from the crowd. “They were leaving the library across the street when they saw him fall, but they couldn’t say whether he was pushed or not. They remained calm at first, but then rushed to tell the doorman. They’re pretty shaken up.”
“Damn.” Kids shouldn’t be exposed to such horror. “Did the doorman see anything?”
“No, sir. He was attending to something at the desk when the man jumped. The moment he returned to his post, the girls raced up to him.”
“Okay. I’ll have a word with them. Did you call the medical examiner yet?”
“Sure did. He’s on his way.”
“Good work.” He half expected Gonzalez’s tongue to roll out and pant, but instead the new recruit shot Derek a toothy grin.
“And you notified the crime scene unit, right?” He couldn’t be sure if procedure was cemented in his brain yet.
“Yes, sir.”
Derek nodded, and then made his way to the witnesses. He whipped out his phone and called the precinct a few blocks away. Thinking the girls would feel more comfortable if a woman escorted them home, he asked for a female officer. He’d never been any good at handling females in a time of need.
A cool puff of rotten egg smelling wind pushed through the humid air, relieving the oppressive heat. The bay sure was in a bad mood tonight, belching algae bloom like a smokestack.
Derek stepped over to the cruiser where a beat cop stood watch. The two witnesses were huddled in the backseat—a blonde girl consoling a sobbing brunette. He couldn’t be sure under the glare of the streetlights, but he guessed they were no more than sixteen or seventeen.
Derek dropped to his haunches and pulled out his notepad and pen. His pants bunched at his thighs, and he tugged on the fabric to ease the constraint.
The air conditioning poured out from the opened door, providing brief relief.
“Hi, I’m Detective Benally.”
The blonde pulled out her IPod earplugs as the brunette sat up and froze, her eyes wide. He knew his six foot seven frame and bald head scared a lot of people, but he didn’t know how to make himself look less intimidating other than to crouch down.
“Can you tell me your names?” He used as soft a tone as he could muster.
“I’m Carrie Wilman,” the blonde answered.
“I’m Jennifer Mendez,” the brunette said wiping the back of her hand under her nose and sniffling.
Derek pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to her.
“Thanks. He’s really dead, isn’t he?” the brunette asked.
“I’m afraid so. Can you girls tell me what you saw?”
The brunette spoke up. “We were crossing the street from the library to go to our car when I happened to look across the street. He was...in mid air.” She hiccupped a sob. “It was terrible. His arms were flapping and his feet were kicking.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t get the sight of him out of my head. When he hit the ground, he made such a loud thunk. Oh, God.” She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed once more.
His heart lurched at her pain. She’d never forget the man’s shattered body. He could still remember the first time he’d seen a fatal car wreck, and the horrific image had never faded.
Derek turned toward the more composed girl. “Did you happen to look up and see anyone on a balcony?” As in someone who pushed the victim?
“No,” the blonde said.
It had been worth asking. “I’ve called for a policewoman to follow you home.
“Thanks,” the brunette said, holding out his handkerchief.
Derek stuffed it in his back pocket, not knowing how else to comfort them. He glanced back at the street. The CSU team had arrived, their flashes lighting up the sidewalk in short bursts.
It was going to be a long, grueling night.
Seven frigging days of non-stop work and Derek still hadn’t made any headway in the Vanderwall case. He had yet to figure out whether Carl had jumped from the high rise or had been pushed. The neighbors had offered no insight into the man’s apparent suicide. His coworkers had claimed there was no way he’d take his life. They said he’d only invested a small portion of his money in market, and when it tanked, he’d remained calm, unlike so many of his clients.
Before Derek had a chance to decide his next investigative lead, the phone next to his bed rang. He dropped the dumbbells he’d been hefting and answered, slightly out of breath. “Benally.”
“Uncle Derek,” his nephew whimpered. “Mom’s...Mom’s dead. She’s really dead. I don’t know what to do.” Billy’s breath hitched. “She...she shot herself in the head.”
The fear lacing his voice ripped at Derek’s soul. His mind screamed a panic alert as his blood pressure skyrocketed. Think. I’m a First Responder, dammit. His nephew was fifteen. He could handle this. “Are you sure she isn’t breathing?”
Good. ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation. A bullet to the head wasn’t an automatic death sentence.
“She’s not moving or anything.”
His heart nearly jumped out of his chest. Rayne couldn’t be gone.
“Call 9-1-1 and hold a towel to the wound, okay? I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Anger clenched his gut. Derek grabbed his sage packet and squeezed hard, but his talisman failed to give him any solace.
“Hurry!” Billy cried.
Heart racing, he snatched his wallet, badge, gun, and keys. Once in the car, Derek dialed Billy needing to hear that maybe his nephew had overreacted; that his sister might be only slightly wounded, but the line was busy. Shit, that’s right. 9-1-1 kept the caller on the line until help arrived.
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 bac
k 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.”