Flynn worried his bottom lip.
“You’re not going to tell us,” she concluded. “But it’s not like he can hurt you.”
Flynn’s gaze hardened and he ground his teeth. “There was nothing else in the bag, okay. Just the cash he paid with.”
“You’re sure about that?” Amanda pressed, curious why he was getting defensive.
“Yes,” he seethed.
“Besides the bag, did he have anything else with him?” Trent interjected, and she could have smacked her new partner upside the head. He’d given Flynn exactly what he’d wanted: a shift in direction.
“Not that I recall.”
Amanda glared at Trent. “You’re doing good; this is very helpful,” she praised Flynn, certainly undeserved, but she had to do something to salvage the situation and get Flynn talking. “What you probably didn’t know is Mr. Palmer just finished serving time in prison.” She was trying to feel out Flynn and get a sense of what had him clamming up about the bag.
Flynn swallowed roughly. “I didn’t know that.”
“And if he had a weapon on his person, it would be helpful to know that.” She tossed this out nonchalantly, trying to gauge what could have been in the bag that had him so worked up.
Flynn held up his hands. “None that I saw.”
She nodded, finally assuaged that it wasn’t Palmer himself or the contents of the bag that had Flynn worked up. That left one other possibility she could think of. Maybe the fear originated from someone Palmer had been with or who had visited him. “When Mr. Palmer checked in, was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you happen to see if Mr. Palmer had any visitors or left with anyone between his checking in and last night?” She resisted the urge to say checking out even if it was accurate.
“No, I didn’t.”
Again, she got the sense Flynn was withholding, but there was only so much she could do. The military would waterboard people to extract information, but that method was a little extreme for this situation. “Does that mean you didn’t see anyone or you’re just not saying?”
“I don’t know when the guy died, but I’m not the only one who works here,” Flynn huffed out.
“Fair enough,” she said, though she felt there wasn’t anything fair about the way he was shifting the onus to his employees. “Who else worked between Friday night and last night?”
“Lorraine covered Saturday and Sunday during the day, clocked out at six in the evening each of those days, and David worked Saturday night. I finally had a night off.”
“Their last names?” she asked.
“Lorraine Nash and David Morgan, though I’m not sure I should be telling you all that.”
“Let me assure you that you should,” she said, making a note of the names in her phone. “And when are they expected for their next shifts?”
“Lorraine at nine this morning, and David later at six.”
“Thank you. Now, I noticed a camera on the way in here. Does it work?”
“Nah. It’s just there to keep the clients in line. The boss is too cheap to get a working one.”
That answer didn’t entirely surprise her, though it was disappointing. This area of town and this dump specifically would attract shady people. She went to fish one of her cards from a back pocket of her jeans and remembered that she didn’t have any on her person.
She gestured toward Trent. “Detective Stenson, if you could give Mr. Flynn one of your cards.” That’s if he had any yet…
“Ah, sure.” Trent pulled one from his jacket and handed it to Flynn.
Huh. Malone must have known about his transfer into the department for a while.
She drew her gaze to Flynn. “If anything else comes to your attention or your memory, call Detective Stenson day or night.”
Flynn pocketed the card but made no promises.
“There’s one more thing we’ll need before we leave.” She looked at the pegboard and the hooks. Six keys were missing. One was room ten where Palmer was, and the others were numbers two, three, seven, twelve, and fifteen. She gestured toward them and said, “Those the rooms currently rented out?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks.” She put her phone back in her pocket, grabbed her cup and left. Outside, she gulped back the rest of her coffee, not bothered by the fact it was now tepid. She’d drink the stuff cold. She just about tossed the cup in a garbage can next to the office door but stopped herself. It was possible that something in there pertained to Palmer’s death. She’d make sure the CSIs collected the bag.
“Everything all right?” Trent bobbed his head toward the garbage can.
She leveled a glare at him. “I had everything under control in there.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to say anything,” she said, talking over him. “And you let him steer the direction of the conversation.”
“I just thought—”
“That I report to you?” she spat.
“Not at all.” Trent diverted his gaze over her shoulder, then moved it back to meet her eyes. “I should have stayed quiet in there, listened and learned from you.”
“Are you bullshitting me right now?” Did he really think that by sucking up to her he would gain her favor?
“What?” His cheeks turned bright red. “No.”
She studied him. Was he still that eager-to-please Dumfries PD officer? He had to be thinking she was born yesterday to consider his speech was sincere, but by all accounts that’s exactly what she’d say it was. Either that or he was a good actor, and she had met her fair share of those in her life.
“Malone explained the situation to me,” Trent started.
“How I have history with Palmer,” she ground out as iron walls erected and clunked into place around her.
Trent shrugged in his coat as it seemed a chill ran through him. “He told me that I’m the lead on paper. He stressed ‘on paper.’”
The temperature was still below zero but her core warmed. She’d given him the opening to dissect her past and he hadn’t taken it. “And you’re good with that? Being the lead on paper?”
“Absolutely. I can learn a lot from you. You’ve been at this—what?—thirty years?”
“Hey.”
He smiled.
“Detective for seven.” Her fellow officers would talk and say she’d only advanced so quickly because of who her father was, but she’d worked her ass off every step of the way.
“That’s more than me. I’m on the ground floor here.”
“Glad you know where you stand. Tell you what: you go talk to the guests in rooms two and three, and I’ll hit seven and twelve. Whoever finishes first wins room fifteen. They might not like us knocking on their doors considering it’s after”—she looked at the time on her phone—“one thirty in the morning, but we need to find out everything we can tonight. Ask them if they saw anyone go into or come out of Palmer’s room in the last twenty-four hours or heard anything.”
They weren’t armed with a time of death yet, but she’d worked enough death investigations to know that rigor, as a general rule, took twelve hours to set in and started in the extremities such as hands and feet within an hour or two of death. Palmer’s hand had definitely been in a state of rigor.
“Sure.” Trent grinned, likely gushing at this opportunity to branch out solo and probably just about to thank her for the opportunity.
She turned before the conversation could become any cozier. It was a little uncomfortable as it was, and she had to draw the line. Besides, this little arrangement with Trent was only temporary, regardless of what Malone might think.
Six
Amanda grabbed some business cards from her car’s glove box before hitting her first room. Even with the pit stop, she beat Trent to room fifteen. Lucky her. The renter was some pothead who had no idea what day of the week it was and probably didn’t know he was on planet Earth, but he did tell her he’d checked in last night and offered up his s
ob story. He said he was only there because his old lady had kicked him out—as if he’d had no part in that happening.
She finished up with him at the same time Trent left room three and headed toward him.
“How did you make out?” she asked him.
Trent consulted his notepad. “Room two were two men—‘married to women,’ they stressed. Not sure why.”
“Guilt, shame at being caught, any number of factors.” She rolled her hand to hopefully encourage forward movement. When he didn’t seem to pick up on the visual cue, she said, “I’m more interested if they saw or heard anything that relates to our case.”
“Nothing.”
“And room three?”
“It was a lady who checked in a couple of days ago. She’s hiding out from her abusive husband.”
She tapped a foot. “Sad, but again more life story than I need.”
Trent scanned his notepad, flipped the pages. “She said that she kept her curtains closed and stuck to herself.”
“So she saw nothing?” Amanda pushed out.
“No.”
“So how did it take you so long to walk away with so little?”
Trent tucked his notepad into one of his back pant pockets. “Showing a personal interest can go a long way in getting people to open up.”
“Sure. About things that don’t matter.”
Trent clenched his jaw but didn’t say anything.
“Just remember with a death investigation we’re working on a fine timeline. The best chance of catching a killer is in the first twenty-four hours.”
“I’m well aware of that—” Trent clamped his mouth shut and stared off into the distance. His eyes held more embarrassment than anger, and she actually felt a twinge of remorse for talking to him like he was a child.
“You know that,” she shoved out, hating that she cared an iota about his feelings.
Trent simply nodded.
“I didn’t get far either,” she started. “Four people between the three rooms, but the guy in seven saw a short, squat man hanging around in the parking lot yesterday afternoon. The two in room twelve couldn’t agree with each other, except for the fact they didn’t see any men. One of them insisted they saw a thin woman, while the other described her as obscenely overweight. They couldn’t agree on the time either but thought it was Saturday afternoon or evening—they couldn’t decide. The guy in room fifteen was too busy carrying on a conversation with his invisible best friend while I tried to get him to talk to me. Apparently, his friend saw a tall, lean man.”
Trent’s lips twitched as he resisted a smirk. “We’re not getting anything from these people. They don’t want to talk to the cops.”
“Safe to conclude, Captain Obvious.”
The sound of a vehicle coming into the lot took her attention. It was a van with Office of the Chief Medical Examiner stamped on the side.
“Look at the timing on that,” Amanda said. Though it would have been more ideal if they’d arrived already and had updates such as time of death, manner of death, and speculative cause of death so she and Trent could get on with their next order of business and dig into the last few hours of Palmer’s life.
As the ME parked, Amanda went over to Becky and got another pair of plastic booties for her shoes. Trent had probably stuffed the ones she’d given him into a pocket. Then they headed to Palmer’s room to check in with the crime scene investigators.
The smiley CSI was just inside the door working her magic with an apparatus that magnetically charged a sheet of mylar. The process would attract any dirt particles and, if there were shoeprints to find, make them plain to see. A forensic investigator once told her that shoeprints are almost as distinctive as fingerprints, each one unique. Numerous factors such as brand of footwear, weight of the wearer, gait of the wearer, history of the shoe made each sole different. Lifting prints in a place like this would be hell though. Amanda couldn’t imagine the cleaning staff was too thorough.
The investigator stood and smiled at Amanda and Trent. “Want back in?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Amanda replied, and the investigator stepped aside. “Actually, while I’m thinking of it,” Amanda started, “it might be a good idea if we collect the garbage outside the office too.”
The investigator poked her head out the door, followed the direction of Amanda’s pointing finger, and said, “You got it.”
“Thanks.”
Amanda and Trent put on their plastic booties and gloves and entered the room.
The slender and older CSI was taking Palmer’s fingerprints. Trent looked at Amanda.
“It’s procedure,” Amanda started, about to explain the CSI’s purpose for doing it.
Trent took over. “It’s to verify the deceased’s identity and it tells investigators right away if he has a history with the police.”
She’d obviously misread why he’d looked at her. Regardless, if Trent had been her pupil, Amanda might have patted him on the back and given him a gold star. But he wasn’t, and for some reason his knowledge and brown-nosing ticked her off.
“Did either of you find a duffel bag?” she asked, moving farther into the room. “Maybe in the dresser or the closet?”
“Not me,” the investigator near the door answered.
“Me neither, but CSI Donnelly’s been working on the room, while I’ve been tending to the deceased,” the slender CSI said, nodding toward the investigator who had been searching for shoeprints.
“Donnelly?” Amanda said. “I’m Detective Steele and this is Detective Stenson.”
“Nice to meet you,” Donnelly said.
“I know who you are,” the other CSI mumbled.
Amanda bristled. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Emma Blair.”
There was an electric charge to the air, far more powerful than any forensic apparatus could be, and Amanda wondered why Blair seemed so hostile.
“Some body called?”
Amanda turned and was pleased to see Hans Rideout. With numerous qualified personnel at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas, a town about a half hour from Dumfries, it was a crapshoot as to who would be sent out. Rideout was one of the best. He had morgue humor down pat and, for a career built on death, he had quite the zest for life. In his forties with a full head of gray hair, he had deep smile lines around his mouth. Sometimes his cheeriness was almost too much to handle, but Amanda was more concerned by the fact he’d know who Palmer was to her.
“Hi,” Amanda said to him.
“Hey-lo.” Rideout’s greeting came out in two parts, with the latter in a baritone. He waved one hand toward Palmer; the other held his case. “You do know who that is?” He looked directly at Amanda.
“Uh-huh.” She drew up tall, ready to defend herself.
He held eye contact with her and eventually said, “All righty, then,” and got to work.
She went straight to Palmer’s wallet, more than ready to return to what she’d been doing when Trent and the CSIs had shown up. So, he had a couple of expired credit cards, a healthcare insurance card, and a ten-dollar bill. She rattled that inventory off for Trent, then pulled out two photos from another partition. One was of Palmer with a woman, both smiling, probably taken around the time of the accident given Palmer’s appearance. They were standing rather close, which indicated a romantic relationship, though they weren’t touching. If she was a girlfriend, Amanda didn’t remember her face from the trial. The other picture was of a teenage Palmer next to two other boys about the same age, each of them holding bicycles at their sides. She flipped each picture hoping there’d be names, but no such luck.
She passed the photos to Trent. “We’ll want to find out who they are.” She wasn’t hinging much hope on their identities having much, if any, bearing on the case, but it was still a matter that needed to be explored. If Palmer had been targeted, the more they found out about his life before prison the better.
“Possible one of them is Palm
er’s next of kin,” Trent said.
“Could be,” she replied.
Rideout lifted his gaze from Palmer’s body to her. His frown said it all: she shouldn’t be working this case. But damn it to hell, she could compartmentalize the personal from the professional. She’d had years of practice as a cop stuffing her feelings down deep, keeping the recommended emotional distance from the cases she worked and the families she had to deal with.
“Whoever they are, we’ll find his next of kin.” Her words circled back to her ears with far more confidence than she felt. After the accident, she and her father had pried into Palmer’s life. The intention had been to build a case for the prosecution, to establish a pattern of behavior—Palmer had always been a drunk—but during the process they’d found out his parents were both dead and he didn’t have any siblings.
Trent handed the photos back to her, and she looked at the one of Palmer with the woman again. If she had been his girlfriend, they could have broken things off before the case went to trial. She returned the photos to the wallet and in exchange fished out a business card. She angled it for Trent to see.
“King of Pawnshops,” Trent read out.
“It was located in Woodbridge,” Amanda said. “Place is out of business now, but Palmer was part owner there before he went to prison.”
“We should reach out to his partner then,” Trent said, not questioning for a second that Palmer had been to prison. He’d definitely been read in and knew Palmer’s history.
“You said King of Pawnshops?” CSI Blair stopped whatever it was she was doing near the closet.
“Yeah?” Amanda angled her head, not sure where Blair was headed.
“Oh.”
“Not following,” Amanda said.
“The owner of that pawnshop was murdered. Brutally. It was one of the nastiest crime scenes I’ve worked in my career.”
Amanda tried to recall the name of Palmer’s partner. It was Jackson something, but his last name wasn’t coming. “You remember his name?” she asked the CSI, curious about her change in attitude. She’d been so hostile up until now.
“Jackson Webb. I’ll never forget. He’d been tortured. His fingernails were removed, and he had cigarette burns all over his body.” Blair consulted Rideout. “Do you remember that?”
The Little Grave: A completely heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Amanda Steele Book 1) Page 5
