Recluse (Spider Series Book 1)

by Jaycee Ford

  “Most girls at least have that one person they confide in.”

  I pulled off the highway and onto a service road. Surrounded by trees in the middle of nowhere, a modern facility with walls made of glass overlooking a row of twenty shiny trucks. We parked alongside one of these massive trucks, and as I got out of the car, I gazed up at a bright red rig with Freightliner emblazoned on the side.

  Lara sighed. “Boys and their semis. Come on, Wyatt.”

  I nodded and walked toward the building, occasionally glancing back to stare at the truck. Lara pulled open the door and we walked in, but stopped in front of a fully enclosed yet empty reception desk. A woman got up from her desk in the back office, entered through a door, and stood behind the reception area. Her boots clicked against the tile floor when she moved, her short skirt showed off her curves. If I weren’t already in love, I would definitely become a truck driver just so I had an excuse to come back here.

  “Hi, can I help you?” she asked as she pushed her glasses up higher on her nose.

  “Are you in sales?” I asked.

  “No.” She laughed. “But I can get you the sales manager.”

  “We actually need to see Eddie Williams,” Lara interrupted, flashing her badge. I didn’t have to flash a badge since I was wearing the dreaded khaki uniform.

  “Oh …” She glanced between the two of us before picking up the phone.

  “There are two cops here to see Eddie,” she spoke into the receiver. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

  She hung up the phone and walked through the door behind her. Once more, her boots clicked against the tiles as she walked up the hallway and into the lobby.

  “If you would come with me, I’ll show you to the conference room.” She was polite, but tense. She guided us to a room at the end of the hall. “He should be with you shortly. Please help yourself to some coffee.”

  She left us there, closing the door behind her. Once Lara heard it click shut, she spun around, her hands on her hips. “Did you forget about Grace already?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I can still appreciate a nice-looking woman.”

  “Really, Wyatt …” She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  I shrugged, glancing around at the posters of 18-wheelers lining the room. Lara sat at the conference table to read over a file she had probably memorized by now. It wasn’t long before the door opened again. In walked a clean-shaven man with his face and hands covered in grease.

  “Eddie Williams?” Lara asked.

  “Is this about my daughter?” he asked, using a rag to protect the knob from grease as he closed the door behind him. He wiped off his hands and added, “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to sit. This is a new facility and I don’t want to dirty the new furniture.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Williams,” I began as I walked between him and Lara, who sat at the head of the table. I rested my hands on the back of a chair. “When did you hear about the death of your daughter, Erica Gunter?”

  “My wife called when she saw it on the TV.” Tears streaked through the grease on his cheeks. “I took a few days off work. Today is my first day back.”

  “Mr. Williams—” Lara began.

  “Please,” he cut her off. “Call me Eddie.”

  “Eddie, how close were you with your daughter.”

  “As close as a shunned person could be, I guess.”

  Lara and I exchanged the same glance we shared when speaking to Erica’s uncle.

  “Can you explain?” I asked.

  “Her mother and I were crazy about one another, but her family refused to allow us to get married. I guess they didn’t see a mechanic who dropped out of high school as someone fit to take care of her and a newborn baby. Her brother would have scalped me had he known I was involved in any way.”

  “Scalped? That’s a bit derogatory, Mr. Williams,” Lara insisted.

  “I have nothing but respect for the Cherokee, but that man threatened to kill me if I didn’t leave his family alone.” He shook his head. “I remember that day clearly. Ama had just given birth and I was in the viewing area, staring at my little girl. He walked up to me and told me I was worthless. He said Ama and his niece deserved a life better than what I could provide. His threats were so fierce that Ama later refused to marry me. She loved me so much she was willing to push me away to save my life.”

  “So, you never saw your daughter? Didn’t have any kind of relationship with her?” I asked.

  He reached behind him and pulled out his wallet, flipping it open as he handed it to me. There were at least eight pictures of him and his daughter in various stages of growing up. A few of the pictures included Erica’s mother, Ama, but there was only one picture of Erica, standing alone and smiling for the camera.

  “I was as much a part of her life as I was allowed to be. Ama hated it too. She never married and neither did I until a few years ago, after Ama had passed. Erica was the one who told me it was time to move on and find happiness.”

  I thought of Chloe, and of the night she’d said almost the exact same thing to me. Part of me hoped she would repeat those words to her mother later tonight.

  “When was the last time you saw your daughter, Eddie?” Lara asked.

  “Christmas day. She was excited about nursing school. I was excited for her. I didn’t want her to grow up not having a future like her old man. I do well for myself now, and can support my family, but she was so smart. She was destined for greater things.” He teared up again. “I told her she should go to medical school and become a doctor, but her heart was just so big. She wanted to be able to help people more.” He sniffled and tried to contain his tears. “I just want y’all to find the bastard who did this. Regardless of what her uncle thought of me, I was the best father I could be to that girl given my situation. She was my life.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Williams,” Lara said as she rose from the chair.

  “Do you know when they’ll release her body? I bought a plot right next to her mother’s. I would like to bury her there. Hopefully, Dakotah won’t object too much. She needs to be buried next to her mother.”

  “I’ll let you know, Eddie.” I held out my hand to him. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He shook my hand and nodded his gratitude. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve before walking out of the conference room.

  “Should we question the wife?” Lara asked.

  I shook my head. “This feels like we’re going in the wrong direction.”

  “Which direction should we be looking in then?”

  “I don’t know, but this feels a lot like square one.”

  THE CHILL IN the air grew brisker as the day went on. I hurried across the street, clumsily prying open the door to the police station while holding bags of food. Lara walked through the open door before me, trying to juggle another bag of food and two gallons of sweet tea.

  “What’s all that?” Charley asked, standing up behind her desk.

  “Bojangles.” Lara grinned and raised her goodwill purchase. “I figured we could use some fried chicken.”

  “That’s so nice of y’all, and so much better than the salad I brought for lunch.” Charley came out from behind the counter to help Lara. She took the two gallons of sweet tea and headed toward the break room.

  “Charley,” I interrupted her. “Could you take those into the conference room? We need to have a meeting.”

  “Sure.” She darted back across the lobby and down the hallway.

  “Think that helped me earn any points with Charley?” Lara asked while taking one of the three bags in my hands.

  “She’ll come around. She’s had a rough time adjusting since her divorce. I think.”

  “I can understand that,” Lara said before heading down the hall. One by one, everyone came out of their offices, their noses on high alert.

  “Do I smell chicken?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, biscuits…” Evan said, brushing past Jack, following the smell into
the conference room.

  “What’s all this about?” Caleb asked as he stood outside of his office, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “We’ve got nothing. We have to go in a different direction,” I told him before walking into the conference room.

  I unpacked the boxes of fried chicken and biscuits from the bags and placed them next to the bags of macaroni and cheese and French fries. Everyone began serving themselves. I made a plate of my own and went over to the whiteboard displaying the taped-up pictures of Erica’s family and friends right below a picture of her.

  “As it turns out, Erica not only had a relationship with her uncle, Dakotah Gunter, but it appears she was also extremely close to her father, Eddie Williams.”

  “Wait…” Caleb interrupted. “No one in her day to day life had any idea she was close to either of these men?”

  “It appears that way.”

  “I have a theory,” Lara said. “I think she kept her family a secret from everyone because she’d grown up knowing she had to. In a way, it was natural for her.”

  “You think she was trying to protect her family?” Tanner asked. “From who?”

  “From each other,” I said.

  “But why?” Grayson asked, ripping into a leg of chicken.

  “They hated each other,” I explained.

  “To be fair,” Lara interjected. “We only know that Dakotah Gunter hated Eddie Williams. We don’t know how Eddie would have felt about Dakotah if given the chance, but Dakotah made no effort to welcome him into the family.”

  “So, this has nothing to do with her inheritance?” Charley asked.

  “Look at you being all detective-like,” Evan teased.

  “I’m a vital part of this investigation.” Charley smiled at her best friend. Evan shot back a smile that lingered on her before he returned to eating his food.

  Caleb stood up and flipped the board around, giving us a clean slate. At the top he wrote, December 27th and drew a line below the date. He put the cap on the marker and spun around. “I think we need to question her co-workers next.”

  “I agree,” I said. “We need more information about who was at the restaurant that night and how well they were acquainted with the victim. I don’t think it was anyone she personally knew.”

  Caleb cocked his head slightly to the side as he pondered what I said.

  “You don’t?” Tanner asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re convinced it’s going to happen again.” It wasn’t a question. Maybe he could read it in my facial expressions, or maybe he just knew me a little too well, but somehow he understood the feeling in my gut telling me this would happen again.

  “I don’t know why Erica was chosen, but her death was a message,” I said. “I don’t know the reason for the message. I don’t know if Erica was a target or if she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we’re dealing with something much greater than someone going after her inheritance.”

  “So, what is the message?” Jack asked.

  It was an excellent question, and one I didn’t have an answer for. Luckily for me, Evan had a question of his own.

  “Are we really just gonna wait until this happens again?”

  “What else can we do?” Grayson asked.

  “I’ve worked out the questioning of all the restaurant employees, but with the holidays, it’s been hard to get them all in one place,” Tanner said. “Cooks and I are meeting with them the day after New Year’s.”

  “We have to figure out who was in the restaurant that night.” Caleb dominated the conversation. “It had to have been someone who followed her. Heavner, Murphy, y’all were there. Can you recall how many people you saw when you were at dinner?”

  Jack dropped his chicken wing and wiped his hands and mouth with a paper napkin. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “We’ve been trying to think about that,” Evan said. “But I mean, we were really only paying attention to Erica so we didn’t notice how many people were there. Guess we dropped the ball on that one.”

  “I’m sure beer was involved,” Lara chided.

  “Naturally,” Jack said. “But we did go kind of late. There weren’t that many people eating dinner, and the place isn’t all that big.”

  “So, we’ll have to find out what customers were there that day,” Tanner said, glowing at his own brilliance.

  “At least who was there during her shift,” Grayson added.

  “It could have been anyone for days or weeks before,” Lara told them. “There’s no way to find every customer. Some of them would have paid with cash.”

  “It is a pretty popular restaurant,” Evan conceded. “It’s always packed on the weekends.”

  Tanner deflated quickly.

  “This is going to be tough.” Jack shook his head and tossed his napkin down onto his plate.

  “What else can we do?” I asked. “We have to stop this guy before he does it again.”

  “Do you think it could have been an obsessed customer?” Lara tossed out an idea.

  “That’s going to have to be a question for the staff.” Caleb pushed away from the table and began writing the names of the employees on the whiteboard, looking down at a sheet of paper. “Something we probably should have looked at initially.”

  “So, do we rule out everyone in her personal life?” Grayson asked. “She wasn’t close with that many people.”

  “Yeah,” Tanner said, mildly embittered. “But we were told she wasn’t close to her family and that turned out to be complete bullshit. So who knows what kind of relationships she had.”

  “How was Camille Roy’s boyfriend?” Caleb asked. “Did he give off any vibes?”

  “Blake Wicker?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you pick up any vibes, Lara?”

  “He seemed pretty protective of Camille, but I can understand his position given she was the one who found Erica.” Lara exhaled. “I honestly don’t know. He’s an attorney. They have good poker faces.”

  “Maybe y’all should question him again.” Caleb turned back to the whiteboard, continuing to write his list.

  “Care to take a ride, partner?” Lara asked as she stood up to throw away her plate of chicken bones.

  —

  We made the short drive to Hickory and found ourselves in the lobby of an office building where Lara stared at the receptionist for ten minutes while I paced back and forth impatiently.

  “Did he say when he would be done with his lunch meeting?” Lara asked the receptionist. She didn’t try to hide her annoyance in the least.

  “I said it would be just a minute,” the receptionist shot back with the same amount of attitude.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous.” I marched out of the waiting room and headed for the hall behind the receptionist’s desk. Lara’s heels clicked after me, and the receptionist’s heels followed her, coming up on me even faster.

  “Sir, you cannot go back there,” she ordered.

  “You don’t have the authority to tell us to stop,” Lara said as I marched past a dozen open office doors with attorneys peering out. “We’ve been waiting, but this is unacceptable. You are infringing on the law. I could arrest you for obstructing a murder investigation.”

  I came to a closed door with a nameplate that read Blake Wicker. I tried the handle, but it was locked.

  “Do his lunch meetings usually require a locked door?”

  “Sir, please—”

  I raised my hand up for her to quit talking. I leaned against the door and heard a faint rustling followed by shattering glass. I stepped back, drew my gun, and kicked the door. It flew open, revealing Blake Wicker with his pants around his ankles and standing in between the legs of a woman that wasn’t Camille Roy.

  “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better,” Lara said, holstering her gun.

  “Pull up your pants and come with us, Mr. Wicker,” I ordered as I kicked the broken highball glass out of the way.

  “I’m not going anywhere wi
th you.” He yanked up his pants while his friend frantically buttoned her blouse.

  “I did ask nicely.” I walked over to him and grabbed his arm, twisting it up behind him just before I slammed his face into the desk. “You’re under arrest.”

  “On what grounds?” he screamed.

  “Obstruction of Justice,” I replied while handcuffing him. “By refusing questioning.”

  “This is absurd. I will sue the force for this,” Blake fumed as I yanked him away from the desk and read him his rights.

  “It should be a crime to have a dick that small,” Lara joked as I pushed Blake toward the door.

  He fought and struggled all the way out of the building, but gave up once we reached the car. He simply remained silent for the entire drive back to the station.

  Once at the station, we brought him straight into the interrogation room for questioning. He looked rough sitting in that hard, unforgiving chair with his shirt untucked, his suit rumpled, and his tie hanging loosely about his neck. Despite his disheveled appearance, he sat tall and proud, a smug expression painted on his face.

  “You have declined to have an attorney present,” I noted.

  “I am an attorney.”

  “State your name,” Lara demanded.

  “Blake Wicker.”

  “What is your relationship with Erica Gunter?” I asked.

  “This again?” Blake rolled his eyes. “Like I told you before, my girlfriend was Erica Gunter’s roommate.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be your ex-girlfriend after today,” Lara said. “When was the last time you saw Erica Gunter?”

  “I don’t know.” Thoughtful, he looked down at the table. “Perhaps during that Christmas party Camille and Erica organized.”

  “Perhaps?” I pressured him. “You’re not sure?”

  “I don’t recall seeing her on any other day between the party and Christmas.”

  “Where were you on the evening of December 26th?” Lara circled him with an air of intimidation.

  “At dinner with Camille.”

  “And before your dinner with Camille?” I asked.

  “I was … at work.”

  “Why the hesitation?” Lara asked.

  He sighed letting his head fall back. “I was with Vanessa.”