by Amy DeMeritt
“Oh, no.”
“How did we miss her? We stayed till they were kicking people out and we didn’t see her anywhere. Why are they all women? None of them appear to be doing anything unusual in the videos.”
“Either, there is more caught on camera that they’re not showing, or there was some DNA on him or the crime scene and these women are their best leads to find a match based on the activities in the cameras. All of them have black hair, so I’m thinking some strands of hair were found on him or the scene.”
“Do you think that woman is the one we saw originally that we thought was Isabell? The footage isn’t very clear.”
“I don’t know. Her skin tone and facial structure doesn’t really match. That woman on the camera footage looked like Isabell with her wig on.”
“I know. I guess I was just grasping at straws, hoping against the odds that this isn’t really happening.”
“She’s the only woman in pants. They’re going to look at her the closest because she would have the easiest time getting away in a hurry with how she’s dressed. Plus, her dark and less flashy attire would make her go unnoticed as she moved around. She could even be mistaken for someone working the event, which could have given her access to areas of the venue she shouldn’t have been.”
“How are you so good at knowing how they are thinking?”
I frown and look down at my hands. Hannah gently places her hand on my cheek and turns my face to look at her. I still haven’t told her anything about my time working with the police department.
“Brooke, baby, what happened?”
“I’ll probably fall asleep soon, but I’m going to need a drink to answer that.” Hannah’s eyes widen for a moment. “Well, I actually wouldn’t mind having one right now too. How about we open that other bottle of wine you have in the cabinet?”
I watch Hannah uncork and decant two tall glasses of wine for us. While the dark red liquid pours into the stemless clear wine glasses, I start having flash backs of the cases I helped with.
Before I can get too deep into my recollections, Hannah hands me a glass and leads me back out to the sofa. I take a few sips and take a deep breath. I haven’t talked to anyone about my time with the force. I don’t even really know how to start. Hannah gently rubs her hand over my leg, encouraging strength into my resolve to finally open up about the horrors I witnessed.
“The first case I worked, was in my junior year in college. It was a missing child that had reportedly gone missing when she was playing hide and seek. She was found dead at the bottom of a storm drain two weeks after the missing report was filed. I had to climb down with a couple of detectives and get photographs of the young girls decaying body and the surroundings. Before I could take the internship, I was required to go to a forensics farm, which is basically a place in the woods with corpses that were donated to science in varying degrees of decay in various scenarios and so forth. It was a horrible place, but it did nothing to prepare me for what I saw that day or the many cases after. The forensics farm felt more like a really disgusting museum, but the cases I worked felt like nightmares. ”
I pause to take another drink of wine. Hannah looks thoroughly upset and sympathetic, as if she just wants to hold me and never let me go. That loving look gives me strength to continue.
“The coroner came down and inspected the body and wanted to rule it an accident. There were no outside signs of trauma or rough handling. But then I noticed something while I was taking photographs. Several feet away, there was another drain grate and just barely visible in the bands of sunlight shining through was a small amber glass bottle. It was a poison used by vets for euthanizing animals. After they took the body back to the morgue, they did a full autopsy and toxin screening, which they wouldn’t have done if I didn’t see the bottle. The girl had been poisoned and then hidden in the sewer.”
“It’s a good thing you saw that. The parents must have been grateful.”
“Not exactly. They were the ones who killed her. She had autism and they didn’t want to deal with her anymore.” Hannah gasps and rubs my leg. “That’s terrible.”
“After that case, the detectives started requesting me to be on almost every site, regardless if there was already a photographer taking shots of the scene. The lead officer I always worked with wanted me to join the force. She said I had an eye for detail that’s hard to find. I had considered it for a while. I actually helped a lot by looking at evidence and suspects and observing the questioning of suspects to pick up on body language. I helped them break many suspects into giving confessions by watching from the outside and coaching them on what buttons to push.”
“Wow, babe, that’s amazing. Why haven’t you told me sooner how much you did with them? I thought you just took pictures.” I shake my head and take a deep breath. “Because, the last case I worked was supposed to be me.”
“What do you mean? ”
“Everything I did with the force was only known by the police department. None of my contributions to the cases I worked on were ever made known to the public and it was all kept out of the files to protect me.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“It was. Till the lead officer I worked with, Detective Donna Sheetz, was killed because of it.” I take a big gulp of wine and swallow back tears. “I know we have both shared our past relationships with each other, but I haven’t been able to tell you about Donna. She wasn’t just someone I worked for and she wasn’t just my partner in solving murders.” Hannah looks at me sympathetically and takes my free hand in hers. “Oh, babe.” I give her a small brave smile and kiss her lips. “We were friends and then it developed into more. Our one-year anniversary was only three days before she was brutally murdered.”
Tears start to trickle down my cheeks and a lump forms in my throat. I stand up and walk over to the French doors to my backyard. I stare at the sky of soft fluffy white clouds gently gliding across the vast light blue expanse of the heavens. Donna loved to stare at the clouds. She thought they were the safest place to be. Less death happens in the skies than on the land and seas. She used to joke that if she ever became the richest person in the world, she would invest in creating a utopia in the clouds.
“Brooke.”
Hannah places a hand on my shoulder. I look over at her worried face and wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her in close before looking back at the sky.
“The last case we worked on together was our hardest. We were taken off every other case to focus solely on this one. After five months, we were finally closing in on concluding the case and making a final arrest. Long story short, there was a string of seemingly unconnected murders over the course of a few months that we were finally able to find a minor common detail that had been overlooked. We were able to link them all to an import shipping company in New Hope. We were getting close to making the arrest; we just needed a little bit more evidence or someone involved to crack and name names.
“One morning, I got a call that the other crime scene photographer they were relying on for the other cases was sick and they needed me to report to a scene.”
I pause to take a drink and take a deep breath. Hannah gently kisses my cheek, making me feel warm and safe.
“The location was an alley off of Chapel Hill Road in New Hope. I should have realized before I got there what I was going to find. The location was a block away from the shipping company that we were about to come down on.”
I gulp down the rest of my wine and pull Hannah with me to the kitchen to get a refill. I lean against the counter and drink half a glass down before I continue.
“As soon as I turned down the alley, I saw her. If it wasn’t attached by a strap around my neck, I would have dropped my camera. I ran forward, pushing through people to get to her. Before I could bend over her crying, James, her partner, grabbed me and held onto me. He was also crying, which was very uncharacteristic for him. We learned later that the guy I picked to try to break and get him to cooperate
with us as a key witness was caught by who we were trying to bring down. They figured out he was talking to the police, and to save his own skin, he spilled everything about Donna. In killing her, they sealed their fate, but they did it to send us a message.”
I down the rest of the glass and pour another. Hannah looks at me worried and opens her mouth as if she wants to object to me drinking anymore, but she closes her mouth and just bites the inside of her cheek and waits. Drinking for stress isn’t something I’ve ever made a habit of, and I know it never will become a habit, so I don’t feel ashamed for using it for courage to recount this horrible period from my past.
“They didn’t end her quickly. There were signs that she had been tortured first, presumably for information. After whatever they did to her, she was shot execution style in the back of the head and then dumped in the alley.”
I start crying and Hannah quickly wraps her arms around me, pulling my head down to lay on her chest.
“Baby, I am so sorry.”
“It was supposed to be me, not Donna. I was the one that discovered the link to the shipping company. I picked the weak link to try to break. It should have been me.”
The tears are so thick and heavy they are completely saturating Hanna’s shirt like a rainstorm. My throat is raw and sore with the pain of these emotions I had kept buried for so many years suddenly being unleashed.
“Baby, please don’t say that. It’s not your fault she died. She knew the risks involved going into the line of service. That’s why she made sure your identity and help with the cases was protected. She wouldn’t have wanted you to be the one to go out like that. Brooke, I cannot even begin to imagine what any of that was like. Have you ever talked to anyone about this?”
“No, no one knows I helped the police beyond being a crime scene photographer. And no one knows about my relationship with Donna and involvement in her death. I’ve never told anyone any of this. I actually haven’t allowed myself to think about it in years.”
“How many years has it been?”
“It was four years in January.”
“You have gone four years without talking about this? Babe, you lost someone you loved in a very brutal way. How have you been able to cope with that by yourself?”
“I started to mentally visualize those couple of years as pictures in a photo album and I locked the album with a padlock, not allowing myself to look inside. Occasionally, an image slips out or something makes me remember certain things, but for the most part, I have been able to block out that time.”
“Are you ok with forgetting that time? Aren’t there some good things you want to remember?”
I look in her eyes and feel like I’m looking into her heart. The look is pure love without any sign of selfishness or jealousy.
“To be honest, Donna was a good woman. When we were outside of work, we were outside of work. She didn’t talk shop at all. She was completely different at work and at home, but she was a kind, caring woman all of the time. Yeah, I guess there are some good memories I wouldn’t want to forget, but when I think about those, I also think about of all the ugly things that happened. Not thinking about the good parts helps the bad to pop up less in my head.”
“Brooke, I love you and I’m so sorry you have had so much pain in your life. You amaze me every single day.”
“I love you more than anything, Hannah. You should know that even if Donna hadn’t been killed, we still wouldn’t be together today. Donna had a hard time saying, ‘I love you’. I’m not really sure why because I knew she felt it and she did things to make me know it. She just struggled with getting the words out. I don’t think I could have gone on in a relationship not hearing those words like I dealt with in my relationship with my mom.”
“I don’t understand that. Saying, ‘I love you’, to you is the sweetest taste on my lips I’ve ever tasted. It feels so good to say those three words to you.” I smile and my cheeks blush. My eyes tear up with renewed emotion and Hannah smiles with a mist in her own eyes as well. “I love you, Brooke. I love you more than I can express.”
“I love you, too. I’m sorry I kept all of this from you. It’s just hard for… ”
“No, baby, please don’t apologize. I understand why it was hard to tell me. Even without this Isabell stuff, I know you would have eventually told me somehow.”
“Yeah, eventually. You’re not mad at all?”
“Brooke, why would I be mad? I have you right now and I have never felt like you are pining over someone else. I know you love me and want to be with me.”
“These past few weeks have just been way too emotionally draining. Mom, Isabella, and now dredging up this stuff from the past, I just, no, ‘we’ need a vacation.” Hannah smiles broadly and pulls me in closer to her. “Where are we going? I could probably put in for a couple days and we can take a long weekend to go somewhere.”
“There’s a place in Bridgeport I’ve been wanting to get to for years. I wonder if it’s still open. It’s a bed and breakfast that overlooks Gooseneck Pond. It’s really beautiful there and the pond is so huge it looks like a lake.”
“Sounds like heaven. Let’s look it up.”
Chapter Twenty
“I can’t believe you are taking a vacation. What’s it been, seven months?”
Felicia is perched on the arm of the chair on the other side of my desk while I’m packing up my laptop and some files I may need while I’m out.
“Yeah, something like that. This place is just a little way’s off the beaten track, so just in case the cell reception is poor, here is the number for the front desk at the bed and breakfast we’re staying at. Call me if you have any issues. I’ll be back on Monday. Is there anything you need from me before I leave?”
“Nope. And you better relax and not get on that laptop and check emails. Unless you hear from me, there’s nothing important enough to login to look at.” I laugh and nod. “Ok, I’ll stay off of the computer.”
I walk around the other side of my desk with my laptop and purse slung over my shoulder. Felicia laughs and stands up.
“Your smile right now is fucking adorable.” She gives me a tight hug and then slaps my shoulder. “Ok, get out of here. Have a safe drive. ”
“Thanks. And seriously, call me if you need something.” She rolls her eyes and grabs my shoulders, turning me and pushing me out the door. “Get the hell out of here, Brooke.”
“Yeah, yeah, ok.”
When I get in my car, and start heading home, all of the excitement I have been trying to contain all week starts rushing out of me. I blast my music and start dancing and singing like a sixteen-year-old on the way home on the last day of school in the summer. I have never been as excited about vacation as I am for this one.
Hannah and I are only taking three days off of work, but we will be together for five days total. I’ve never been able to take a vacation with a girlfriend before. I had two relationships that lasted for around a year, but schedules never meshed up to be able to take a vacation together. Hannah and I have been together for over three months now. It feels amazing being able to take a vacation with her. The bed and breakfast we’re staying at is only a couple of hours drive, so we’ll be able to get there before dinner tonight.
When I pull down my street, my giddy excitement goes into overdrive when I see Hannah’s car parked in my driveway. I’m literally hopping up and down in my seat so badly that my foot is pumping the gas like a teenager trying to act cool by making the car buck.
Hannah climbs out of her car when she sees me pulling in behind her and I can see the amused smile on her face. I couldn’t be cheesing any bigger if I tried. I quickly turn my car off and as soon as I am out of my car, I pick up Hannah and spin her around. She holds on tight and laughs as I twirl us around a few times. When I set her down, she plants her lips firmly on mine for a moment.
“Hey, babe. Happy to see me or something?” I laugh and squeeze her closer. “Happier than a nerd seeing the original R2D2 at a co
mic book convention.” Hannah laughs hard and kisses my lips. “That’s pretty damn happy. Are you all packed, Adorableness?”
“I am. I just want to change and then we can load up the car.”
We go inside and I quickly change into some jeans and a tee shirt. I grab a couple bottles of water from the fridge, a tote bag full of snacks, and the directions I printed at work today, just in case the GPS fails us. Hannah’s leaning against the wall watching me with a big grin. My cheeks blush beet red and I laugh a little.
“What?”
“I love how happy you are.”
“Me too. Ok, I’m ready.”
Hannah helps me carry the bags out, I lock up the house, and in no time, we have the car loaded and we’re pulling out of my neighborhood.
“You look really nice by the way.” Hannah looks over at me and grins. “Baby, I’m just wearing jeans and a tee.”
“Yeah, but you look stunning. You are glowing like the north star wearing a human disguise.”
“I love your analogies.” She leans over and kisses my cheek. “So, what do you want to do first when we get there? I looked up what else is around there and there are a couple nice sounding restaurants we’ll have to pass on the way if you want to get dinner before we check in.”
“Dinner sounds really nice.”
We hit a little bit of rush hour traffic on the main highway, but after thirty minutes, we’re on the smaller rural routes and making good timing. I love driving on back roads with woods, crop fields, and open grassy hills. It’s beautiful. The drive feels almost like foreplay for the main event. The views on the way are a spectacular tease for the incredible views that await us at the pond .
