Closer Than She Knows

by Kelly Irvin

  The screaming stopped.

  A horrible silence filled only by his own ragged breathing ensued.

  “Mrs. Conklin? It’s me. Max Kennedy.”

  No response.

  Mrs. Conklin’s spindly back porch light didn’t do much to illuminate her backyard. He edged into the yard. His boot thudded against something hard. He dug his phone from his hip pocket and turned on the light. A twenty-pound bag of mulch. He let the light play across the yard.

  The dark was preferable.

  Mrs. Conklin lay sprawled on her back, arms flung wide, legs bent at a bizarre angle. Her ripped, gaping pink housedress was hitched up above her white knobby knees. Fuzzy pink slippers had been knocked a few feet from her body. Her long white curls wreathed her head, but her blue-rimmed glasses were MIA.

  Blood seeped from wounds on her chest, arms, and hands. Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

  Max’s Army medic training kicked in. He knelt and touched her neck.

  Nothing.

  His stomach churned. The Whataburger with cheese and tots he’d eaten for supper threatened to make an appearance. Blood pounded in his ears. He sucked in a long breath. “Abba Father, help me.”

  He punched the button for 911, hit Speaker, dropped the phone in the grass, and made the report as he began CPR.

  Counting, counting, counting, then breathing, counting, counting, breathing. Still nothing.

  The sound of the dispatcher’s voice kept him company. Yes, he was still here. Yes, he was doing CPR. No, she wasn’t breathing.

  “Help is on the way.”

  “Thank you. Come on, Evelyn, come on, please!”

  He stopped and leaned over to listen. No puff of air on his cheek. No sudden inhale of air.

  This wasn’t Hollywood, after all.

  Counting, counting, counting. His shoulders ached. Sweat ran into his eyes. Yet he shivered with cold.

  Nothing.

  The metallic taste of dwindling adrenaline in the back of his throat, Max leaned on his haunches and wiped sweat from his face on his T-shirt sleeve. His hands were covered with sticky blood.

  He’d seen a lot of dead men and women in his six-year hitch with the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it never ceased to amaze him how quickly the vacancy sign went up. Only a husk remained where once had lived a nice lady who made tasty double-fudge brownies, always smelled like lilacs, and was the first person in the neighborhood to welcome Teagan when she moved in next door. Mrs. Conklin even offered to take care of Tigger when Teagan went out of town. A nice gesture considering the exuberant dog knocked the lady on her keister once in Tigger’s excitement to see her. In Tigger’s defense, her neighbor often kept doggie treats in her pockets. Her Chihuahua, Princess, had passed away, but she still stocked the treats for neighborhood dogs.

  Mrs. Conklin lived alone. She had no family here in town. For now, Max would be her family.

  The crickets went back to their chorus. Mosquitoes buzzed him. The sounds became Humvee engines straining on the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan and the whop-whop of blades as helicopters hovered over screaming men with broken bodies and blood pouring from deadly wounds.

  When his counselor said it was better to face the triggers for his PTSD, surely he didn’t have this in mind.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. Finally. It really didn’t matter. Mrs. Conklin wasn’t going anywhere.

  A branch snapped. Leaves rustled.

  Max unfolded his legs and stood in a single motion. “Who’s there?”

  Quick, furtive footsteps.

  A dark figure flung himself—or herself—at the six-foot wood-plank privacy fence that surrounded the backyard.

  Max raced across the grass and scaled the fence. Note to self: steel-toed leather boots didn’t work for pursuit of bad guys.

  Since when did a part-time youth minister, part-time mechanic chase bad guys?

  He dropped into the pitch-black alley. Gravel crunched under his boots. The putrid stench of full garbage bins struck him in the face. Straining to hear, he panted. Left or right?

  Right.

  He turned. The blow caught him across the forehead and sent him smashing into the bins.

  Pain.

  Lights out.

  4

  Atrip to SAPD’s headquarters downtown had not been on Teagan’s itinerary earlier in the day. But a witness to the murder had to give a formal statement in an interview room with the digital recorder running. That ensured a good record for when the case went to trial. When the perpetrator was caught. Teagan hung on to that optimistic thought as she climbed into her car in the courthouse parking garage.

  By now Officer Moreno’s body had been transported to the medical examiner’s office for the final indignity of an autopsy. An autopsy. How many times in her career had Teagan written records of testimony by a Bexar County medical examiner investigator? Two, three, four hundred times? How many times had she gone back to check her work, searching the transcript’s numbered lines to make sure every word was clean? What would the investigator’s testimony sound like in Kristen’s case?

  7A. She was in a body bag and her hands were bagged

  8with paper bags. She was partially dressed. Part of her

  9clothing had been cut away. And she looked to be an

  10adult female with injury–

  11Q. All right. And in–in–and when you’re

  12doing an autopsy and you’re–and you’re examining a

  13body and you’re looking at the clothing, were you able

  14to determine basically what did it appear had been the

  15reason for this person dying?

  16A. What was obvious on first examination with–

  17was that she had a gunshot wound of entry in her left

  18temple. And a second one in her left neck.

  19Q. Was there an exit wound to either?

  20A. For the neck wound, yes, but not the head wound.

  Teagan might have written a hundred records with medical examiner testimony over the years but never the autopsy of someone she knew. Someone who’d been sitting next to her talking one moment and blown away the next.

  The dry heaves hit her hard. Breathe, in and out, in and out. Thank God she hadn’t eaten lunch.

  Gracie had shown up and given Teagan a ride to her car after the interview. Which meant sitting in her stepsister’s so-called eco-diesel Dodge Ram Lone Star edition, dissecting the situation in minute detail for another forty-five minutes before Gracie finally released Teagan with the admonition that she must go directly home, lock her door, turn on her security system, and sleep with Tigger at her side.

  Which was what she usually did. First she wanted a cool glass of iced peppermint tea and a quiet few minutes on her back porch, enjoying a soft breeze. She needed space and silence.

  She turned the corner onto her street. Flashing lights. An ambulance. A crime scene unit SUV. Cop cars.

  Crime scene tape.

  She slowed, then stopped. A nightmare on repeat? It couldn’t be. She’d left the crime scene but here it was, slapping her in the face all over again.

  Max. Had she sent him into harm’s way when she asked him to feed Tigger? If anything happened to Max, it would be her fault.

  The dry heaves returned. She swallowed again and again as purple dots danced in her periphery.

  The first responders weren’t in front of her house. Instead they swarmed the next house down. Evelyn Conklin?

  Her empty stomach tied in double knots. A patrolman she didn’t recognize refused to let her get any closer, so she parked the Prius in front of the Nixons’ house three down.

  She grabbed her wallet and exited the car. Driver’s license in hand, she approached the officer. His name tag read DIAZ. “Officer Diaz, I live right there. See?” She pointed to her address on the license. “What’s going on? Is Mrs. Conklin okay?”

  “Ma’am, I need you to back up. We’ll get you into your home as soon as we can.”

  He coc
ked his head toward the crowd of neighbors huddled across the street. Most of them were young professionals who were rehabbing old houses just like Teagan. Evelyn was an exception—an original property owner who hadn’t given in to the pressure to sell her aging, crumbling home. She did her own yard work, climbed a ladder to clean her gutters, and handed out homemade Rice Krispies treats on Halloween.

  “I need to find my friend. He was headed here to feed my dog.”

  “He may have come and gone before the incident occurred.”

  “He’s not answering his phone.” She edged past the officer. Max’s motorcycle was parked in her driveway. So where was Max? “Just let me take a quick look in my house.”

  “Ma’am, back up. Now.”

  She had no choice. She backed up. And tried Max’s phone again. No answer. She texted him.

  Where R U?

  No answer.

  Unease mixed with dread, making nauseating muck in her gut.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  Dana Holl, a defense attorney who owned the forties bungalow-style house on the corner, slid in next to Teagan. Her sweat-stained workout clothes suggested the well-muscled blonde had just come from the gym and not the courthouse. “It looks like it must be Evelyn. They’ve got CSU there and the ME’s investigator. Who would murder a sweet old lady?”

  Teagan didn’t bother to reply to her rhetorical question. Dana knew as well as Teagan that sweet old ladies were targeted by criminals because they so often were defenseless. However, Evelyn wasn’t defenseless, and woe to the thug who underestimated her. She had a state-of-the-art security system installed after her husband died. She kept a baseball bat, pepper spray, and a Taser in strategic spots throughout her quaint four-bedroom, two-story house built in the fifties. She stopped short of a gun because she believed the experts when they said an assailant could easily turn it around on her. “How did they get in? Evelyn wouldn’t open the door to a stranger.”

  “I don’t think she did. I think the thugs caught her in the backyard. All the activity is back there.” Oscar Benavides, Teagan’s neighbor to her right, was a professor of Latinx culture and creative writing at UT San Antonio. He shared the Victorian cottage with artist Carlos Chavez, who owned a renovated warehouse that held an art gallery, rental studios for artists, and a coffeehouse.

  As usual Oscar was dressed in tight black jeans, a black T-shirt, and high-end sneakers, and his silky black hair was pulled back in a man bun. Also per usual he sounded eager to pounce on any morsel of gossip he could. “No one is saying anything yet, but that’s the way it looks.”

  “Thugs? There was more than one?”

  “I think. They’ve got cops spread out, going door-to-door in the neighborhood. I saw the PD copter overhead a few minutes ago. And they’ve got your friend the motorcycle man back there.”

  His heartthrob smile didn’t hide the fact that he was dying to drop that tidbit on her and see her reaction. One of the few disadvantages of living in a neighborhood where people actually tried to know each other’s names and help each other out when the car battery was dead or the dog got loose or the electricity went out was that they also knew each other’s business.

  “You saw Max?” Her heart began to beat again. Air flowed through her lungs. “He was okay?”

  “I couldn’t tell for sure, but from here it looked like he had blood on his shirt. An EMT was looking him over, but he was walking around.”

  “If he was walking around, he’s okay.” Dana offered her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure they’re interviewing him as a witness.”

  “It makes me sick how everyone is just standing around watching or taking videos on their phones so they can post them on social media.” Stephanie Nixon parked her jogging stroller containing two-year-old Charlotte who had passed out, pacifier firmly affixed in her mouth. Stephanie owned a cupcake shop on Alamo Street while her husband worked trauma surgery at University Hospital. They were refurbishing a Craftsman three houses down from Teagan. “The media trucks are lining up on the next street over.”

  The modern age. More and more amateur phone videos showed up on the local and national news every day, but that didn’t keep the professionals from converging on crime scenes in hopes of getting their money shot of a pool of blood.

  “It’s almost like a block party.” Oscar rubbed his hands up and down his tawny brown arms. “Only everyone turned out. Do you think the murderer is mingling with this crowd, surveying his handiwork with delight?”

  Oscar’s love of murder mysteries was showing.

  The question made Teagan shiver despite heat that lingered even in the dark. She glanced around. Her neighbors and the media comprised most of the crowd. Lots of strangers, too, but she couldn’t know everyone in Southtown.

  She wanted her dog and her couch and the afghan her grandmother made.

  She wouldn’t mind having Max around either. He was an amateur boxer with a license to open carry. And he put up with her.

  Teagan tried his number yet again.

  His husky voice urged her to leave a message. “Be God’s,” he concluded as he did every email and every message. “Where are you, Max? I see your bike but no you. Call me back. Please.”

  She could hear his response now. His golden-amber eyes would spark and his full lips curl up in a lazy smile. “Are you worried about me, T?”

  Yes. She worried about all her friends and family members. A person who’d lost her mother at the tender age of nine did that. With Max it was necessary when he took his bike on long road trips to clear his head of the cobwebs left over from a war that left him emotionally scarred and drug and alcohol addicted. He drove too fast and leaned into the turns far too much for her liking. Almost as if his carelessness might be intentional.

  But she never told him that. Instead she said stupid stuff like, “Why can’t you drive a minivan like a normal youth minister?”

  “No such thing as a normal youth minister,” he would retort.

  And he would be right.

  “Officer, I need to get into my house. I need to see if my friend is there. His bike is out front, but he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Sorry. As soon as the detective in charge of the scene gives the all clear, I promise we’ll let you in.” Officer Diaz had the earnest delivery of a new guy on the beat. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Who’s the detective? Is it Billy O’Rourke, by any chance?”

  “No, ma’am. Detective Siebert.”

  Siebert was old school. Closer to her dad’s age than her brother’s.

  The gate to Evelyn’s backyard opened. Max trudged through it, Detective Siebert at his side. A CSU officer lagged behind a few steps with a wad of paper evidence bags under one arm and a camera hanging from his neck.

  Thank You, Jesus.

  “Max!” Teagan dodged the officer, ducked under the crime scene tape, and raced across the yard. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  A bandage on his forehead didn’t begin to cover reddened skin already starting to turn purple. Something dark muddied his white T-shirt. Max shot forward and enveloped her in a hug. His sandy five o’clock shadow rubbed against her cheek, and his strong arms squeezed the breath from her. “I didn’t get to feed Tigger. Sorry.”

  “Seriously?” Teagan pushed back to get a look at his face. Trauma etched lines around his mouth. His eyes were red rimmed. Max didn’t need this. He’d had his share—more than his portion—of trauma. She managed a reassuring smile. “Tigger will survive. What happened?”

  “Who are you?” Siebert intervened as Diaz took Teagan’s arm and tried to tug her free from Max’s embrace. “How do you know Mr. Kennedy?”

  “Don’t touch me.” Teagan drilled Diaz with the famous O’Rourke glare inherited from a mother who had all the redheaded Irish temperament of her forefathers and mothers. “This man is my friend. He’s the youth minister at Faith and Hope Community Church. He came here at my request to feed my dog.”

  She turned bac
k to Max. “What happened?”

  “As I explained to Detective Siebert, I heard screaming. I ran to Mrs. Conklin’s backyard and found her on the ground.” Max’s voice faltered. He ducked his head and stared at his boots. “I performed CPR, but I couldn’t revive her. She had been stabbed several times.”

  A wave of nausea hit Teagan in tandem with dizziness that had nothing to do with lack of food since breakfast or a long stretch of sleepless nights. “I just talked to her this morning. When I left the house she was watering her roses. She told me people think roses are hard to grow here, but her Belinda’s Dream roses bloom nine months out of the year.”

  She needed to stop babbling. The matching sympathy in the three men’s eyes didn’t help. They saw a poor woman who needed consoling instead of an experienced court reporter with two capital murder trials under her belt. Teagan gulped air and steadied her voice. “She brought me a bouquet of cut roses last week. They’re pink and they have a light but sweet fragrance . . .”

  Max slid his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s sit down.”

  Siebert stepped into their path. “So you corroborate Mr. Kennedy’s story that he has a key to your house and permission to enter it in your absence?”

  “Corroborate? You don’t seriously think Max had something to do with this?” Teagan corralled fierce disbelief. The guy was doing his job. “I can corroborate it, yes. Max has a key. I asked him to come. Plus, he’s a friend of Evelyn’s. He stows boxes in the attic for her. He had his youth group kids paint her house and install energy-saving devices in January after that nasty cold snap.”

  “We found Mr. Kennedy in the alley outside the victim’s backyard. He has blood—presumably hers—on his shirt and hands.”

  “I gave her CPR.” Max’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He cleared his throat. “I tried to save her, but she was already gone.”

  “Did you find the weapon?” Teagan shrugged free of Max’s arm. “Did he still have it on him?”

  “No.”

  “So how did he dispose of it? He left and came back? You actually think he had time to do that before first responders arrived?”