Roadkill

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  “You talked about the black paint like you believe her vehicle collided with another one, which leads me to believe she was attacked, forced off the side.”

  “It’s possible. Hard to know yet. We’re running tests. I’ve seen the car firsthand. Looks like paint transfer to me, which means if another car was involved, then we have to consider whether she was hit accidentally, causing her car to spiral, and we’re looking at a hit-and-run, or whether we’re dealing with a premeditated, intentional attack.”

  “Aside from the paint, did you notice anything else curious about the wreck?”

  He nodded. “The back window on the driver’s side was completely busted out. No other windows were shattered the same way.”

  “Anything else?”

  His attention shifted, and he appeared to be thinking about something. “I’ll be right back. You want a drink or anything?”

  “I’ll take a soda if you have it. Any kind is fine.”

  He nodded and left the room. Several minutes went by. I wondered where he’d gone, what he was doing, and how long he’d make me sit there before he came back. And where was Seth? Was he even still in the building? I poked my head out of the office and stared down the hall. It was empty. Seconds later I heard the rubber squeak of shoes heading in my direction. I quickly reassumed my former position.

  Ford entered the room, this time wearing latex gloves and carrying a duffel bag and a can of orange soda, which he passed to me. He set the bag on the table. “Does this bag look familiar to you?”

  I leaned over the desk, looking it over. “It doesn’t. Should it?”

  “I was hoping you’d recognize it. It was found in the trunk of your sister’s car.” He unzipped the bag, pulled the top apart, and pointed. “Take a look inside, but don’t touch anything.”

  “I’m well aware of protocol.” I hovered over the bag, shocked when I saw the inside was filled with a pile of cash. “This is ... you’re saying ... this money was found in my sister’s car?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Any idea where she got it?”

  I met his gaze. “I don’t have a clue. How much is there?”

  “About seventy thousand dollars.”

  Seventy.

  Thousand.

  Dollars.

  What the hell was she doing with such a large sum of money, and where had it came from? “I understand now why you asked Seth to check his bank accounts.”

  “The money is the most significant thing we’ve found, but there’s more.”

  I turned my attention back to the backpack. “How much more?”

  He opened a side pocket, reached in, and pulled out a handful of pictures. He lined them up side by side in front of me on the desk. “Do you recognize any of the people in these photographs?”

  I scanned each one, recalling memories from the past. “Yeah, I do. Most of these are of pictures of us from when we were kids.” I tapped a finger on the one in the middle. “These are our parents.”

  “Are they alive?”

  “They’re not. My mother died of breast cancer about ten years ago. After her death, my dad’s health declined too. It was one thing after another, until he passed away about a year later. They were close, my parents, and I always thought once my mother was gone, my dad didn’t have the will to live without her.”

  “What about these other photos?”

  I looked them over again, focusing on the one at the end. “This is Juliette and Seth’s wedding day.”

  “Interesting, don’t you think? She took only one bag when she left, and it just happened to include a photo of the guy she was supposedly leaving.”

  He was right. It was strange. I stood for a moment, trying to make sense of it. “Even if the marriage was over, Juliette still cared for Seth. I believe she’s always loved him. I think the reason she wrote a note instead of talking to him about her decision to leave was because she didn’t want to hurt him. Is there anything else in the bag?”

  “Some makeup, a change of clothes, and one more thing you might find interesting.”

  He reached in again and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and held it up so I could see. It was a flyer for a house for rent in a small town in Colorado. A town I’d never heard of before.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “We called the phone number listed on the ad. The owner said he’d just rented it to a Jessica Farnsworth.”

  “Jessica Farnsworth? He didn’t rent it to my sister, then.”

  “He said the tenant was due to arrive last night, but she never showed. She was the same age as your sister and was moving in with a two-year-old little girl. I believe your sister was using an alias. She was Jessica Farnsworth.”

  I stared at the paper, a coldness creeping over me. “Why would Juliette move to Colorado of all places? I don’t think she’s ever even been there before. Not to my knowledge anyway. And why did she feel the need to change her name?”

  Ford gathered all the items and placed them back in the bag. “I dunno. I’ve been asking myself the same questions. For now, you’re free to go. I’ll check in here and there to see how things are going, and you let me know if you learn anything.”

  I stood, glancing back at him before I walked out the door. “Hey, I wanted to ask for a favor.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I know she hasn’t been released to family yet, but I’d like to take a look at my sister’s body.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I’d spent the last several years of my life inspecting dead bodies, but nothing could prepare me for seeing my own flesh-and-blood cold, stiff, and pale, flattened on a metal surface. Her body was in full rigor. And I was in full devastation. But the emotional swell would have to wait. I had to get through this first.

  A woman stood across from me, her arms crossed in front of her. She’d said little since I arrived, except for introducing herself as Sarah Dixon. She was on the shorter side, standing only about five feet tall, and she had a blond braid coming across the top of her forehead, which had been pushed inside a tight bun at the back of her head. She looked intelligent, but her skin was pale, and she avoided direct eye contact. I guessed she didn’t get out much.

  “I’m grateful to you for letting me see her,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Looks like you haven’t started the internal examination.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What have you done so far?”

  “Weighed and measured her, searched her body for any identifying marks. I’ve done an X-ray. She has some broken bones and cracked ribs. I’ve taken hair and nail samples too. Running those now.”

  “Can I look at the body diagram?”

  She passed it to me. On it, she’d written her findings in cursive. One notation stood out immediately—a question mark next to the side of the head. Unable to read Sarah’s chicken-scratch next to the question mark, I pointed and asked, “What’s this question mark here?”

  “There’s a crack in her skull. It could have been related to the crash, but considering the placement of her body when I arrived on the scene, and the fact she was wearing a seatbelt, I’m leaning toward blunt-force trauma. In other words, the wound was the result of a separate incident unrelated to the crash. At least that’s my take on it.”

  A separate incident.

  The foul play theory was starting to take center stage.

  “Most injuries occurred on her left, when the car landed on its side,” Dixon continued. “The head wound is on her right, and it’s farther back. I didn’t see anything in the car that would have caused such an injury.”

  I slipped on a pair of rubber gloves and leaned in, taking a look at the fracture in question. It was less than two inches in diameter, and Dixon was right; there were no other wounds around it. Nothing to explain why it was there, so far apart from the other injuries.

  “If you’re looking for me to say I’m positive about my suspicions, I can�
��t yet,” Dixon said. “Ford told me you’re the new hire in St. George. You know how these things go.”

  “I do, and I understand. How long do you think it will take to finish your examination?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not used to dealing with things like this. My main goal is to be thorough. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “I appreciate it, and you, for taking such good care of her.”

  “I’m ... ahh ... real sorry about your sister.”

  “Thank you.”

  Part of me wanted to stay, to talk Dixon into letting me get involved in the process. But emotionally, I couldn’t. And Ford and Sanders wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. I slipped the gloves off my hands, tossed them into a wastebasket, and stared down at Juliette. Wherever she was now, I hoped she was at peace.

  CHAPTER 19

  I punched in the code to the house Juliette had shared with Seth, letting myself in. Before I left the police station, I’d asked Seth for it. Ford had a few more questions for him, and I didn’t know which one of us would make it there first. I’d assumed it wouldn’t be long before police showed up with a warrant to search the place. I wasn’t sure they’d ever search it, but even if they didn’t, I was glad to have a few minutes alone in their house before Seth returned.

  Whatever had sparked Juliette’s decision to leave, I now questioned whether it had anything to do with her marriage at all. Had she used the marriage as an excuse because she couldn’t tell Seth or me the real reason? It was starting to seem so. If this were true, I believed she had become involved in something those closest to her knew nothing about. It was under the radar enough that none of us suspected. It had caused her to run.

  I needed to know what and why.

  I walked to Nora’s room and switched on the light. I opened her closet. It was lined with dresses in various styles and colors. I picked one off the hanger and squeezed it in my hand, my mind flashing back to a photo Juliette had texted me of Nora in that very same dress a month before. I closed my eyes and pictured my niece. The dress still had Nora’s sweet smell, a combination of vanilla and lavender. I pressed the fabric to my face and just stood there for a time, letting the tears come.

  I pictured her alive somewhere, alone and scared, because I couldn’t bring myself to believe she was dead. And here I sat, unable to help her. I hung the dress back up and went to my sister’s room next. It was neat and tidy, just like Juliette. Clothes were hung in the closet in color coordination, light to dark from left to right, like a professional organizer had arranged it all. I scanned the closet, looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary—even though I wasn’t sure what exactly that would be. All her clothes and shoes were still there. If she’d taken anything more than what was in the bag that Ford had shown me, it wasn’t apparent. I checked her dresser and found the drawers to be full. Seth was right. She had left everything. There were no empty hangers, no empty drawers, no spaces where an item had been removed. It was like she’d left for the day with every intention of returning.

  At face value, nothing stood out as a red flag—other than the fact that nothing stood out as a red flag, of course. I needed to dig deeper. I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table, took it to the closet, and stood on it, reaching for the shoeboxes lined on the shelves above her clothes. The boxes contained a lifetime of memories—photos, awards, journals—all spanning the last thirty years. They were precious mementos she’d saved, items like the photos she’d stashed inside the duffel bag that I assumed she wouldn’t have wanted to leave behind. So why had she?

  Positioned next to the shoeboxes were three pink luggage cases, all turned on their sides. Cases I had bought her a few years before. I pulled them down, one by one, assuming they would be empty, and two of them were. But the weight of the largest one suggested otherwise. I tipped it on its side and pulled on the zipper. The lid flopped open, spilling a handful of dresses onto the floor. I picked one up and held it out in front of me. It was short, black, skimpy, and strapless, and not the way my conservative sister dressed at all. And yet, it was in her suitcase. I held the dress against my body. We were both five foot seven. The dress would barely cover my ass if I wore it. I looked at the other dresses. Each was a bit different than the rest, but the slinky style was the same.

  A few dresses in, I fished out a red one with small pockets, no more than a couple inches deep. I noticed one pocket wasn’t flat like the other one, so I reached a few fingers inside, wrapping them around something dainty. I pulled my fingers out, gasping when I saw what I was holding—a diamond and sapphire tennis bracelet. It seemed like it would have cost a pretty penny—the stones looked like the real deal. Seth only made a modest amount of money, around seventy thousand dollars a year, just enough to cover their living expenses. He’d also never been big on giving jewelry as a gift. The only piece I’d ever known about was her wedding ring. If he hadn’t given the bracelet to her, who had? And why?

  While fiddling around with the bracelet in my hand, I heard a knock at the front door. Thinking it was someone in law enforcement and my few minutes of sifting through the house unaccompanied were up, I slid the bracelet into my pocket, stuffed the dresses back into the suitcase, and returned it to the shelf.

  While en route to return the chair to the table, I stopped. The paint chips and the possible blunt-force trauma were enough to err on the side of caution. On the off chance I was wrong about who was on the other side of the door, I removed a pistol I always kept in my handbag and tucked it into my jeans. I approached the door but didn’t open it. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “Uhh ... hi. It’s Jonas.”

  It’s Jonas was not the police.

  “Jonas who?”

  “I’m Seth and Juliette’s neighbor.”

  Jonas. Right. Juliette had spoken of him on a few different occasions, but when I’d visited in the past, he was always out of town on business, and we had never crossed paths. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if Seth was around.”

  Even though Juliette had always spoken favorably of Jonas, I didn’t know him, and I hesitated to admit I was there alone. “He’ll be here soon.”

  It was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if he’d walked away, until he said, “I saw you arrive, and I’ve never seen you here before,” Jonas said. “Who are you?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “No reason. I was just curious. I saw Seth earlier today. He told me about what happened with Juliette. I figured he hadn’t eaten, so I brought over some pasta my wife made.”

  I crept over to the window to take a peek outside. He appeared to be telling the truth. There was a dish in his hand.

  Headlights approached, illuminating the living-room wall as a car slid into the driveway. Seth had arrived, and I had to admit, I was relieved to see him. Jonas stepped off the front porch and walked over to him, handing him a casserole dish. They did a one-armed embrace and began chatting in the driveway. I wanted in on the conversation, so I opened the door and joined them.

  “I was, ahh, just at your front door to drop this off when you drove up,” Jonas said. “I wanted to see how you are doing.”

  “I’m ... it’s been a hard day.” Seth looked at me, then at Jonas. “Have you two met?”

  “In a way,” I said. “Not formally.”

  Seth lifted his chin in my direction. “Jonas, this is Raine, Juliette’s sister.”

  “Ahh,” he said. “Nice to meet you. Juliette talks about you all the time.”

  Jonas turned toward me and winked, a gesture suggesting there was familiarity between us. There wasn’t.

  “Seth thought Juliette went to your house this morning,” he continued. “If she’s not here with you, I’m guessing she didn’t.”

  “You guessed right,” I said.

  Jonas looked like the kind of guy who prided himself on his ability to woo a person. When it became obvious that it wouldn’t work on me, he didn’t seem to know how to handle it,
and he turned back to Seth. “Have you heard anything yet? I heard the news reported a car crash this morning in the gorge. Doesn’t have anything to do with Juliette, though, does it?”

  Seth nodded but remained quiet, his eyes focused on the casserole in his shaking hands. He looked at me. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to answer Jonas’s question or if he couldn’t bring himself to answer and hoped I’d do it for him.

  Jonas appeared to understand he’d touched a nerve. “Whatever it is, man, I’m really sorry.”

  I wanted to see what the neighbor might know. “She was in an accident. Her car was found this morning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t have all of the details yet.”

  “Is she all right? Is she in the hospital?”

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t survive.”

  “I can’t believe it. We were catching up just yesterday.” He shook his head. “What about Nora?”

  “We don’t know where she is.”

  A look of confusion swept over Jonas’s face. “What do you mean? If the car was found and you know what happened to your sister, how is it Nora—”

  I gave Jonas a brief overview of the day’s events. When I finished, he shook his head in disbelief and said, “Oh, wow. Do the police know what caused Juliette to go over the edge?”

  “They’re looking into it, and they have a few leads. What happened was either an accident or she was forced off the road intentionally. We should know something soon.”

  Seth leaned against the car, rubbed his chin. “There might be a third option.”

  I turned toward him. “Which is?”

  “I hate to even mention it because I can’t believe it could be true, but earlier today Jonas said he thought Juliette was depressed. He suggested she might have taken her own life, which would mean it wasn’t an accident or anything to do with anyone else. I hate to say it, but it may have been self-inflicted.”

  My nostrils flared. I glared at Jonas, resisting the urge to slap him across the face for making the suggestion. “Uhh ... no. No way.”