by L. T. Ryan
“What is it?” she said.
“What?”
She placed her hand on mine. My fingers settled down.
“You’re a wreck,” she said.
“Something about this room,” I said. “Can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something. I’ve learned to trust that feeling. It’s always right.”
“Always?” She lifted a curious eyebrow.
“There’s a dud here and there.”
She squeezed my hand and then slid off her stool. For a day out policing, she smelled nice. She walked behind me, circled around the island and headed toward the fridge. Her head and her eyes never stopped moving. I doubted she’d find anything. Then again, it couldn’t hurt to have her look.
“Wonder why they didn’t disturb anything in here?” she said.
“Me either. They trashed everything else. What’s so special about the kitchen? It’s like they knew whatever they were looking for wouldn’t be in here.”
She let the door to the freezer fall shut. It created a puff of wind that blew her hair off her shoulders for a second. She turned toward me. Her nose and cheeks were red from the cold air. She smiled, but I looked past that.
I saw what I’d been looking for.
Chapter 19
“Step aside,” I said.
Her smile faded. She narrowed her eyes and said, “What?”
“Just do it,” I said.
April took one step to the right and turned halfway. “What is it?”
I hopped off the stool. We stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the fridge. There were dozens of magnets on the door. It hadn’t struck me as odd earlier, even though, as far as I knew, they couldn’t stick to stainless. In the middle of the door were a bunch of magnetic poetry, words and phrases. Most were spread out into jumbled meaningless messages. Others said corny things like, “All my love belongs to you.”
I pointed at the phrase in the center of it all. There was a gap of at least two inches on all sides separating the group of words from the rest of the magnets. It looked deliberate.
April read it out loud. “Back off get out.”
“And look at it closely. See how that white is smudged? Kind of darker than the others?”
“Kind of red?”
We stood with our arms pressed tight to one another. She looked over at me. I felt her breath on my face.
“Is that blood?” she said.
“You got something to test with?” I said.
She shrugged. “We’re a small department, Jack. We don’t have anything fancy.”
I placed my hand on my face and rubbed down to my chin. Someone had to be able to help. It was an hour’s drive to Tampa. One of her deputies could get there in thirty to forty.
“Grab a camera and an evidence bag,” I said. “We can have one of your guys run it to the city.”
“OK.”
“You’ve got some contacts down there, right?”
She nodded as she pulled out her cell phone and called back one of the deputies. She walked away from me and filled him in on the details.
I continued to stare at the message. I had a good idea who had left it, and why. What I didn’t understand was why they didn’t just track me down and deal with me? Why’d they have to bring Sean and his family into this? These guys knew me twenty years ago. They had no idea who they were messing with now. I could make their lives a living hell.
And I would.
I needed a car, and I had to get rid of April so that I could put an end to this.
I made my way to the living room. April stood in the foyer. The front door opened. She greeted her deputy, and together they walked into the kitchen. I followed behind. I didn’t know this man. He took several pictures of the refrigerator, donned a pair of blue latex gloves, and placed the poetry magnets into an evidence bag.
April said, “Have them test it for blood first, DNA second.”
The guy nodded, and said, “Yes Ma’am,” and left.
April followed him to the front door. I waited in the living room. After her deputy left she joined me.
“I guess we wait,” she said.
“You should go home,” I said.
“I can’t leave you here.”
“Why not?”
She waved her hand around. “What if they come back?”
“I’m a big boy. I can handle it. Go home, April.”
She took a few steps back. Whether she did it purposefully or unconsciously, she blocked my path to the front door.
“Why are you acting like this, Jack?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re going to do something.”
“Probably best you don’t ask a question like that.”
She hesitated before answering. I could see her struggling with the choice. Leave or try to detain me. She threw a curve ball at me.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“Where?”
“You know where. Those two jerks from the bar.”
I hadn’t considered this option. It made sense. She could keep me from doing something stupid, or she could cover up anything stupid that I did.
“You know where they live?” I said.
She lifted her eyebrows an inch, nodded. “Been there several times.”
I followed her outside. The sun had set. It was dark and muggy. Crickets and cicadas competed for our attention. A water bug the width of a golf ball skated across the driveway. Halfway to her patrol car, I began to sweat. I started to long for London.
She started the engine and blasted the AC before she closed her door. I stole a glance in her direction. She took a few deep breaths. Her hands white knuckled the steering wheel. She whispered something. I had no idea what she said.
“You sure you want to do this?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“You can just drop me off and give me directions. No one will know. I sure won’t tell.”
“I’m not leaving you there alone. You nearly killed them in the bar and that took a couple seconds. I’d probably roll up to their house in the middle of the night and find their heads on stakes.”
Ironic, considering where I’d been only a few days ago.
“Besides, these guys are armed to the teeth. They won’t do anything if I’m there.”
She backed out of the driveway, threw the transmission into drive and gunned the engine. We flew around the bend in the road. I saw a turtle off to the side. She slammed on the brakes at the stop sign. Burned rubber seeped in through the vents. I rolled my window down once we began moving in an effort to dissipate the odor.
“How far is this place?” I said.
“Other side of town.”
I wanted to ask her about Jessie. Despite being in town for a day, I knew nothing other than she was dead and they suspected it had been suicide. Our earlier conversation led me to believe that April doubted this. I tried to bring it up a couple times, but couldn’t find the angle.
April gave me one.
“She lived in that neighborhood.”
I followed her gaze toward the community of brick ranch houses. The roofs were all low pitched. The yards all had palm trees and lots of flowers and manicured lawns.
“Kids?” I said.
“Two,” she said. “Boy and a girl.”
“Drive by it,” I said.
She hit the brakes and made a hard left into the neighborhood. Kids playing soccer in the street took to the sidewalks. April slowed down and pointed at a brick house painted light yellow or off-white. Too dark out to tell for sure. The car rolled to a stop a few feet past the driveway.
Yellow police tape covered the front porch and the door.
“How’d she die? I mean, I know it’s being looked at as suicide, but how?”
“Gunshot.”
“Did it look self-inflicted in your opinion?”
“Jack, I’m an amateur when it comes to this stuff. I’ve never investigated a suicide, much less a murder. I’ve been promised
a detective from the city, but they haven’t showed up yet.”
I reached out and placed my hand on her forearm. “It’s OK. I’m not grilling you here, just asking a couple questions.”
She took a deep breath. Her gaze left the front of the house. She stared at me.
“It doesn’t look right to me,” she said. “The position of her body, her hand on the gun, the blood on the wall… none of it seems right.”
“Have you sent the pictures to Tampa’s homicide department?”
She shook her head. “They’re all at the morgue. Anyway, I’ve spent some time online, researching. So far, the feeling in my gut seems right. I guess the detective will let me know if I’m wrong.”
“Can we go in?”
“Key is in the glove box.”
I reached for the latch. It didn’t open.
She pulled her keys from the ignition, fished around for a second, then handed it to me with a small key pointing up. I inserted it into the lock and opened the glove box.
“Grab the flashlight, too,” she said.
I grabbed the key to Jessie’s house and the large stainless steel flashlight. “Got gloves?”
“In the trunk.”
We both got out. The wind had picked up. It blew in from the gulf. Fresh air. Salt air. It felt good and made the humidity a little more bearable.
I met April at the trunk. She popped it, grabbed a box of gloves.
She turned to me, and said, “You need a gun?”
“I’m good.” I didn’t care how she took that. I was armed. If she knew, she did nothing to stop me.
We walked up the driveway and across the paved walkway to the porch. She ducked under the yellow tape. I followed close behind. She cut the tape on the door. It fell in two even length strands along the frame.
“We’ll replace it before we go,” she said.
I heard voices behind us. Looking back, I saw a couple sitting on their porch. Orange embers at the end of a cigarette glowed in the dark. I was surprised I hadn’t picked up on the smell.
The door clicked open. April looked back at me. “Ready?”
I shrugged. “Guess so.”
I clicked on my light and stepped into the dark house. Nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered.
Chapter 20
Leon Barber idled on Suncoast’s dirt and gravel shoulder. He had a view of the police car and the front of the house. The cruiser had pulled up next to the curb and lurched to a stop. Jack and the woman had remained inside for a minute before getting out. They met at the back of the car. She had reached inside the trunk. Leon couldn’t tell for what. Jack reached behind his back, tugged at something.
His piece, Leon presumed.
They walked up the driveway. He lost visual contact with them when they ducked under the darkened porch.
Leon counted back from fifty, slowly. When he reached zero he checked his mirrors then cut across the two-lane road. Gravel pelted the Tercel’s undercarriage. The rear end of the compact car fishtailed. He let off the gas and regained control on the blacktop. By the time he passed the first house in the neighborhood, he drove a steady twenty miles per hour. He slowed down and coasted past the police cruiser. Turning his head toward the house, he searched for Jack. Didn’t see him, though. Police tape covered the porch. The door to the house was closed. Either they’d gone inside, or walked around back.
He slowed down a bit more. The Tercel crawled forward. Two strands of yellow police tape hung from the door frame, about four feet up on either side.
They’d gone inside.
Leon continued another couple hundred feet down the road, made a three point turn and parked about a hundred feet from the house. He studied the tangle of asphalt, grass and siding in front of him. The sky grew darker by the second. The final glimmer of red light over the gulf faded.
He pulled out his cell phone and called Vera.
“He’s at some house with a cop,” Leon said.
“OK.” It didn’t sound like the information surprised her.
“Want me to get closer?”
“No,” she said. “Stay put.”
Leon hung up the phone and tossed it on the passenger seat. It skipped twice and came to a rest next to the door. He was tired of sitting around doing nothing. It’s all he had done to this point. They had people for this. He wasn’t one of them. His job had always been to come in, and strike fast and hard. Sitting in parking lots waiting for the go-ahead was for the desk jockeys. And since he’d been around the whole time, it might not even be his go ahead.
He couldn’t stand being played. Vera was jerking him around. She might be able to keep him from taking Jack out, but she couldn’t keep him cooped up in a car for a week. He slapped his steering wheel.
“To hell with this.”
He leaned across the passenger seat, opened the glove box and pulled out his Glock 17. He’d decided to see what Jack Noble was up to, and how the man would react when faced with Mr. Nine-millimeter.
Leon reached for his door handle and shoved his shoulder into the window. He stopped short of placing his foot on the ground.
If he acted out of line, it would come back to haunt him. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. But one night, he knew, he’d wake up with a sharp blade pressed to his throat. There’d be no meeting beforehand. He’d get no trial or committee hearing.
He’d disappear.
Simple as that.
But first, they’d have to find out.
Chapter 21
Rotting flesh and day old blood hit me like a sack of bricks. I stood inside, next to the front door. April closed it and the odor enveloped us. She gasped a few times. Her hand hit my shoulder, presumably to steady herself.
My flashlight beam hit the opposite wall. Blood coated it. The crimson pattern started about six feet in the air, blossomed, then traveled down in a thick, wide line. The flow of blood continued on the carpet, forming an area that covered three feet out and to the side. Two spent shells lay on the floor. They were within two feet of each other. Someone had placed evidence cards next to them.
The bullet casings stood out.
Why two?
April must’ve read my mind. She patted my arm with one hand and shined her light at a spot on the wall with the other.
“First bullet missed and went through the wall right there. Nervous, I suppose. I know I would be.”
I walked forward, stopped in front of the mess. I looked down, trying to find an alternate path.
“There’s booties in the bottom of the box of gloves,” she said.
I slipped a pair on. The hole in the wall intrigued me the most. I inched closer, then took a step back. I used the flashlight to zoom in on another section. The cone of light spread as I leaned back. The comparison between the small section against the entire wall proved interesting.
“What’re you doing?” April said.
“It’s hard to be positive, but doesn’t this section here,” I circled the area with my flashlight, “look different than the surrounding area?”
She moved in, turned her body sideways and stood close to me. She took short, quick breaths. She wasn’t used to this kind of carnage, and, even though she’d seen it once, it still made her anxious.
“Yeah,” she said. “It looks faded. Muted, maybe.”
“Like some of the paint came off, right?”
“Could be.”
“You guys checked all the linens, the washer, so forth.”
“Yeah, best we could, at least.”
I lowered into a squatting position. The light followed me down. April combined hers with it. The faded pattern matched the blood stain on the wall a couple feet away. A bloom up top, and a streak heading to the floor. This one was thinner. I turned my flashlight toward the floor. The carpet looked fine. Unsoiled. It matched the rest of the room, except for where Jessie’s body had lain.
I inched the flashlight up, panned left and right.
“Look at that,” I said.
/> “What?” she said.
I pointed at the small drop of red on the millimeters wide baseboard ledge.
“Is that blood?” she said.
“That’d be my guess.”
April looked up at me. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. We were close enough that I felt her breath hit me in spurts.
I said, “The faded wall, that could be dismissed, despite the bullet hole. One of the kids could have gone crazy with markers there one day, or spit their juice there. But that single drop of blood there tells us something.”
“She didn’t kill herself.”
“Nope.”
“Someone missed the first time.”
“They hit.” I pointed to my ear. “But not in the right spot.”
“She started to run that way.” April shined her light to the left. “That explains it.”
“What?”
“Why the angle seemed odd. It makes sense now. See, that’s what bothered me. Everything about the way she would have had to hold the gun to get that angle of entry, the blood, it was off because she didn’t do it.”
“Did you find two wounds?”
“Just the entrance and exit.”
“April.” I paused a beat and rose. “That wasn’t an exit wound. That was the second shot. It either grazed her or went through and through. Either way it hit the wall, and so did her blood. It wasn’t as much as the other shot, but it was enough that someone cleaned it. They failed to wipe away one little drop.”
“You’re kidding me,” she said.
“Agreed,” I said.
“What now?”
“Where’s the body?”
“Clearwater. At the morgue.”
“OK. We seal this place up now. You need to get someone out here to guard it. Then we head down south.”
We turned and walked to the door. The warm air that rushed in was a welcome relief.
“What about those two idiots from earlier?” she said.
“We pay them a visit after,” I said.
April went back inside and collected samples while we waited for one of her deputies to show up. I expected her to botch it after her claims of limited training. Whether she’d picked up her skills online, or from TV, she acted like a pro. Best I could tell, at least.