Detective Jack Stratton Box Set

by Christopher Greyson

  Jack held his breath.

  Vargas just stood there by his car door, staring across the street.

  “What’s he doing?” Chandler whispered.

  “Shh…”

  Vargas crossed the road and headed to the burrito stand.

  Jack sat up, started the car, rolled back two feet, and pulled out—all the while keeping his head turned away from Vargas.

  Once they were clear, Chandler looked back and grinned. “You were awesome!” He held up a huge fist.

  Jack knuckle-bumped his friend. “I don’t know if I asked the right questions.”

  “What? You did great with Lori and Betty.” Chandler’s face fell. “What happened after I left?”

  “Lori saw Chambers, Stacy’s boss, and called him over. I thought I’d be busted if he got suspicious, but remember how you gave me a hard time about this T-shirt?”

  “Yeah…”

  Jack grinned. “Well, this T-shirt saved me. Chambers thought I was a cop! He was annoyed at giving up time, but I got two clues off him. He worked late with Stacy that night. He also admitted he argued with her, after I remembered something. I figured out what it was about, too.”

  “Clue me in, I’m lost.”

  “Remember when Jeremy said Chambers wanted something right away?” Chandler nodded. “After you went to the coffee shop, Lori said she and Chambers had a meeting with Right-A-Way Shipping. So, I realized, when Jeremy heard Leland arguing with Stacy, it wasn’t because he needed something right away. It was something about Right-A-Way Shipping, their client. We need to take a closer look at them. And at Chambers.”

  17

  It’ll Cost You

  “Hey, Mom!” Jack called out as he and Chandler walked through the front door.

  “Hi, honey.” Mrs. Stratton came out of the study and gave them both big hugs. “I’ve been worried sick about you since what happened in the park.”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” Jack gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “If I’m going into law enforcement, I have to get used to that kind of thing.”

  His mom’s gaze shifted to Chandler. “How could someone ever get used to that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying to him, Mrs. Stratton,” Chandler said.

  Jack headed upstairs. “I just need to use my computer to look some stuff up. I shouldn’t be too long.”

  He and Chandler planned to spend the rest of the afternoon going over everything they could find on the Internet about everyone mentioned in Jack’s notes.

  They started by looking for information on Leland Chambers. It wasn’t hard to find. Soon Jack’s monitor was covered with business articles, several social media pages, and even a scathing review that Chambers had left for a Mexican restaurant. But none of it seemed to have any relevance to the case.

  “How about we take another look at Nina’s Facebook?” Chandler said. “Maybe Two Point reached back out to her?”

  Jack opened a new tab. But besides pictures of some “cute outfits” Nina had picked up shopping—and more photos of things she’d still like to buy—there was nothing new.

  Jack pulled up the H. T. Wells website next. “H. T. Wells is having a memorial run for Stacy next weekend,” Jack read. “The proceeds are going to help pay for her funeral expenses.”

  “Why would her husband need help paying for the funeral?” Chandler wondered. “I thought they owned a house.”

  “Apparently they were under some financial strain as it was,” Jack said, reading the details. “They both had good jobs, but neither of them had been there long—not long enough to really save anything.”

  “That sucks. You get good jobs, a house and then…boom. Everything is gone.”

  Jack pulled up Michael Shaw’s Facebook page. The last post was a week before the murder. There was a picture of Michael and Stacy at a work picnic for his company, Connect IT. They both looked happy. Stacy beamed at the camera, her eyes sparkling. But Jack couldn’t escape from a different image of Stacy that popped into his head: her body underwater, her dull eyes staring at nothing.

  He quickly closed the tab, typed “Connect IT” into the search bar, and went to the web page for Michael’s company. Connect IT was a small firm that created software apps for cell phone users. Idly, Jack said, “I think my parents are getting me a cell phone for my birthday.”

  Chandler didn’t say anything.

  Jack looked over his shoulder. Chandler’s lips were pushed tightly together.

  Jack smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Don’t tell them I told you.” Chandler flopped down on the bed, and the mattress groaned. “How’d you guess?”

  “I didn’t until I saw your face.” Jack laughed. “I was just thinking that this app here would be cool when we’re overseas. It’s like party chat—we can call my parents and then they can call Aunt Haddie. We get them all on the line at once and save some cash by only making one call.”

  “Sweet.” Chandler grinned. “It’s a two-fer.” His grin widened. “Actually, for me, it’s a zero-fer, because you’ll be paying for the call.”

  Next, Jack pulled up the website for Right-A-Way Shipping. “Ha—you gotta see this. This website looks like someone’s kid made it.”

  Chandler sat up to watch the animated packages flying across the screen and made a face. “Wow, that’s really cheesy. I could do better than that.”

  Jack searched every page of the Right-A-Way website. He made notes as he went and printed out page after page—everything from news articles to their corporate management team bios. All of it was dull and none of it seemed to add up to anything.

  Chandler finally sat up and stretched. “Hey, are you getting hungry?”

  “No, but my mom will make you something. I just want to check one more thing.”

  “Knock yourself out, bro. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  With Chandler out of the room, Jack had a little private sleuthing to do. He pulled up Kelly’s Facebook page, and the first thing he saw was that she’d put up a picture of her and Jack. That quickened his pulse. But what he saw next kicked his heartbeat into fifth gear.

  She had changed her status from “Single” to “In a Relationship.”

  Jack quickly switched over to his own Facebook page and followed suit. He typed Kelly a short message to let her know that he was thinking about her, then went downstairs to the kitchen.

  Chandler sat at the kitchen table wearing a grin that said it all: he was in heaven and he didn’t want to leave. Spread out before him was a plate with a double-decker home-grilled cheeseburger on a toasted deli roll. Pickles, chips, and potato salad were on the side. A huge glass of chocolate milk was at his right hand, and three different types of cupcakes were on his left.

  “How are you not as round as a circle, with your mom’s cooking?” Chandler mumbled with his mouth full.

  “Because I have a little trick called self-control.” Jack looked for his mother, but the kitchen was empty. “Mom?”

  His mother came up from the cellar carrying a tub of vanilla ice cream. “I thought a small root beer float would be nice for dessert.” She smiled.

  Chandler’s eyes lit up.

  “He’s got three cupcakes for dessert, Mom.” Jack thrust his hand at the food. “He’s going to gain five pounds from this meal alone.”

  “He’s a growing boy.”

  Jack nodded. “He’s growing, all right. Sideways.”

  “Shh. Be nice.”

  Be nice, Chandler mouthed with a playful grin before he took another bite of his burger.

  Jack’s mom brought over a burger for Jack, then left the room, leaving the two boys alone.

  “At least skip the desserts,” Jack said.

  “They’re not desserts.” Chandler pointed to one of the cupcakes. “They’re samples. So they don’t count.”

  “Samples of what?” Jack asked.

  “Your mom made a bunch of different kinds of cupcake to see which flavor you liked best for a birthday cake.”<
br />
  “I told you, I don’t want a birthday cake.”

  “Shh…” Chandler pointed to the door as Laura came back in.

  “I almost forgot your dessert, Jack.” She walked over to the counter and picked up a plate piled with cupcakes. “What flavor would you like?”

  Her face fell when Jack grumbled, “None for me, thanks.”

  As they drove away from Jack’s house, Chandler leaned back in the seat and rubbed his belly. “Wow. Your mom is beyond sweet. So where are we going now?”

  “Hamilton Park.”

  “What, again? It’s late.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Ha ha. Yeah, actually, I am,” Chandler said. “Hamilton Park after dark is not my idea of a good time.”

  “I’ll hold your hand.”

  “Okay, answer me this. Why are we going there now?”

  “I want to see the park now, same time as the crime. Come on. It’s a nice night. It’ll take, like, fifteen minutes. If I don’t go, I know I’ll stay up all night thinking about it, because right now I can’t picture what happened, it’s like a black void. I want to take some notes.”

  “Fine.” Chandler leaned his face toward the breeze coming in the window. “It is nice out.”

  A short while later, Jack parked by the entrance of Hamilton Park, leaned over, and opened the glove compartment. Chandler yawned and stretched as he got out. Jack moved some stuff around, frowning.

  “What are you looking for?” Chandler asked.

  “A flashlight.” Jack got out and opened the trunk. He rummaged around and found a small one shoved in the bag holding his jumper cables. He clicked it on and off to be sure it worked.

  “Where to?” Chandler asked.

  Jack pointed. “H. T. Wells is across the street there. If Stacy was walking home, she would have come this way.”

  “But her car was at Ford’s Crossing,” Chandler said.

  “Say someone did rob her. They could have taken her keys and stolen the car. Then they drove it over there, crashed it, and ditched it.”

  Chandler had a habit of thinking with his eyes closed. They were closed now, and his head tilted to the side. His lips moved too. “Wait!” He held up a forefinger. “You’re saying she left her car at work and walked home? How come?”

  “Car problems?”

  “Then how did the car get to Ford’s Crossing?”

  “Good point,” Jack conceded. “I’m only trying to think outside the box. What if she had planned on going back to work? What if she was taking a break?”

  “I don’t think she’d take the big loop around the edge,” Jack said.

  “Why not? If she was just taking a break, like you said, she might have gone anywhere.”

  “True. But if she was heading home, then she’d take the middle path on the right. That’d be the best route to her house. Besides, it goes past bench thirteen, and if we’re assuming she was killed near where we found her, that’s got to be the path she took.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Chandler.

  The park wasn’t as deserted as Jack thought it would be. As they walked, they saw a few homeless people, some sleeping on benches, others walking around. Then headlights appeared in the distance, on the loop road that circled the park.

  “The park’s closed to traffic,” Jack said. “It must be cops.”

  “Aunt Haddie told me they’re increasing park patrols. Just remember to stay below the radar. The last thing we need is a cop asking us what the hell we’re doing,” Chandler muttered.

  As the headlights faded away, the park was quiet. Earlier, the sound of cars from the street had provided a comforting background noise, but now all they heard were crickets and their own footsteps. The leaves in the trees hung frozen, without even the slightest breeze to move them. Jack and Chandler felt like trespassers in the darkness…as if something wasn’t happy about them being there.

  Up ahead, leaning against a light pole, was a woman smoking a cigarette. “Hi, boys,” she purred as they approached. Her tone of voice, the five-inch heels, the Dolly Parton wig, micro skirt, and skintight top—it all left no doubt as to her profession.

  Jack kept his eyes down. As the son of a prostitute, he’d spent his formative years around them. Most people would look at a prostitute and see nothing more than a hooker; Jack saw that too…but he also saw the girl who’d read him Green Eggs and Ham and the young woman who occasionally sang him a lullaby. The disconnect made him uncomfortable. Sometimes the prostitutes—when they were sober—had been caring and nice to him, though most of the time, they’d steal from their own mother to get a fix. Even now, their faces still haunted Jack’s dreams.

  And this woman was bringing back feelings that he didn’t want to remember.

  “You want some action?” She strolled away from the pole. “How about a group discount?”

  “No,” Jack said curtly. The offer made his skin crawl.

  “How ’bout a dollar then?” She followed them. “Just a couple of bucks so I can get a burger?”

  Jack knew not to give her money. Her pimp could be nearby, or she was just trying to get him to take out his wallet. But when he glanced at her, he noticed her black eye. She had tried to cover it with makeup, but hadn’t been entirely successful. She was only a few years older than Jack. Or maybe she was younger. It was hard to tell.

  Jack pulled two dollars from his wallet and set them down on a bench without stopping. “Here you go.”

  The woman snatched the money off the bench and strolled away without a word. Chandler looked as though he wanted to say something, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  As they neared the center of the park, they heard the fountain. Up ahead, the moon’s faint light reflected off the water spraying into the air.

  “We’re almost to thirteen, I think,” Jack said as they passed another bench. This one had a homeless man sleeping on it. Two full trash bags sat on the ground next to him. His hand rested on them both, guarding them even as he slept.

  Without warning, the man opened one eye and watched them suspiciously. As if passing a junkyard with an unchained dog, Jack and Chandler both moved to the far side of the path and quietly walked by.

  “Glad you brought the flashlight.” Chandler pointed to the ominous darkness stretching ahead of them. The streetlight that should have lit this area was out. Jack flicked on the flashlight and shined the beam up the pole and they saw the light’s broken shards of glass silhouetted against the night sky.

  Jack peered around. “If I was going to ambush someone, this would be the place. No one would see you. You’d only be visible for a minute when you got to the top of the hill.”

  “That sounds like something a predator would do. Do you know if she was raped?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this for a living? I don’t know if I could handle it every day.”

  “Someone has to.” Jack walked away from the paved path.

  “Where are you going?” Chandler asked.

  “I want to look around.”

  “Now? We couldn’t do this during daylight?”

  “No. I’m trying to understand the victim. See what Stacy saw. Understand what she was thinking.”

  “You know this is creepy, right?” Chandler hurried to catch up.

  “We found her body over there.” Jack pointed down to the pond.

  “Like I could forget.”

  “The path bothers me.”

  “The path to the pond? The killer…” Chandler looked quickly around, then lowered his voice. “Whoever killed Stacy made that path when he dragged her body to the pond.”

  “I know, but that’s not the path that’s bugging me. Remember, there was another one.” Jack panned the light across the woods until it landed on an opening in the brush. He walked toward it.

  The hum of the patrol car broke the silence. “Cops,” Chandler said. “They’re coming back around.”

  Jack snapped the flashl
ight off. “Get down here so they don’t see you.”

  “Hey, it’s dark! You know, if we go home, that would be another way to solve the problem of them seeing us.” Chandler hurried down the slope beside Jack.

  “The moon’s bright enough. Shut your eyes for a minute, you’ll get used to the dark.” Jack looked around. “There’s no reason for anyone to come this way. You saw the state of things down by the pond—even the trash was ancient. If Robyn hadn’t found the handbag, they wouldn’t have located the body for a while.”

  Chandler took a step closer to Jack. “What are we doing here again? Can’t we come back in the daytime?”

  Jack waited until the sound of the patrol car disappeared, then he turned the flashlight on and pointed it at the top of the hill. “The killer dragged her over the hill and to the pond.” He traced the path beside the trees with his circle of light. “But where did he start from? Was he walking along the path behind her, or waiting here?”

  “Okay, I changed my mind. This is super creepy,” Chandler said.

  Jack walked toward the trees.

  “Now where are you going?”

  “To the trail. The one you were going to explore before we found the body.”

  The trail ran into the woods and was hidden by the hill. Branches pulled at Jack’s shirt and the undergrowth got thicker, but then the bushes gave way to a little clearing. As Jack shined the light around at the dense brush cover, he had the feeling of being in a small nest.

  “Wait,” Chandler said. “Shine the flashlight back over there again. Directly across.”

  Jack followed Chandler’s outstretched finger to some bushes on the opposite side of the clearing. As the flashlight’s beam swept over the brush, Jack realized that someone had made a little lean-to shelter. Its backbone was a stout branch stretched between two trees at waist height, and its angled side was made of thin branches that someone had woven together. Leaves covered the outside, camouflaging it.