February's Regrets (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 4)

by A. E. Howe

  “We are all just doing our jobs.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was almost four in the morning when we walked back to Julio’s car.

  “They’ve called off the search. But I don’t think your dad has gone home. I heard him on the radio a minute ago saying he was going to check out a couple more houses that were just outside the original search area,” Julio told me.

  “I’m not my father’s keeper. I can’t make him go home and get some sleep.” I knew from growing up with him that, even if he went home, he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep. Many nights I’d gotten up to discover him sitting in the living room with a glass of bourbon by his recliner, staring off into space, reliving his day and trying to catch bad guys in his head.

  “You all mind riding in the back?” Julio asked us. On a good day, the laptop and gear in a patrol car made it a tight squeeze to get into the passenger seat, but his was even worse. Like a lot of deputies, he’d filled the seat up with his personal equipment. He even had an office organizer in the seat, stuffed with all sorts of odds and ends.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Actually… I hate to sit in the back,” Pete said. With both of us looking at him, he went on. “Not because I’m fat. I just hate being locked in the back.”

  I just stared at him, trying not to laugh.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I have nightmares about the six months I had to do at the jail when I started. I almost quit. I don’t like being locked in. Sorry.” As easygoing as Pete usually was, both Julio and I realized that if he was putting his foot down like this, he was serious. We pitched in to help Julio put his stuff in the trunk, but I couldn’t resist giving Pete a hard time.

  “Control freak much?” I asked.

  “We all have our fears,” Pete said defensively. “Rumor has it you’re not a fan of heights.”

  He had me there. “Not a rumor. I hate cliffs, tall bridges, high buildings. There’s a reason I live in a town in Florida without a single building more than two stories tall.” I still had the occasional nightmare about a fall I’d taken off of a bridge back in December.

  We’d already given dispatch a description of our victim so they could notify other law enforcement agencies. If anyone within a hundred miles reported a woman missing who matched our Jane Doe, hopefully we’d get a call. All we could do now was wait for her family or friends to notice. The morgue would take her fingerprints and DNA, but that would take a while to check. I was pretty sure we’d have a report before then. Our victim looked like someone who would be missed.

  Ivy got tired of walking over my sleeping body about one o’clock and started meowing at me until I woke up. I’d filled up her bowl when I got home around four-thirty, and that had kept her mollified until afternoon, but she’d decided that if I was going to be home half the day then I should at least be spending it scratching her back or something else equally useful.

  When I checked my phone, I had a texts from Pete and Cara. Pete’s was only half an hour old. Possible victim. Family contacted office. I’m going to check it out. I called him.

  “I’m on my way now. They live south of town,” Pete said.

  “You want to meet? I’ll go with you.”

  “Sure, see you in the parking lot of Winston’s.”

  “Give me half an hour.”

  “Take your time. I’ll have lunch.”

  The text from Cara asked if we were still on for dinner that night. I texted her to call me when she had a break at the vet. She called as I was locking my front door.

  “I know where you were last night. You okay?”

  “So-so. I’m going to meet Pete, and we’ve got a possible lead on the parents of the victim. I guess the latest murder is all over town?”

  “And online.”

  “I can’t decide how I feel about Shantel dragging me into this.”

  “Hey, now. Tonya probably wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t agreed to help,” Cara chastised me.

  “You’re probably right,” I agreed, trying to hold the phone, open the car door and get in the seat at the same time. “I just feel like I’ve been sucked into the vortex of my dad’s unsolved case. And I’m not sure that I’m going to be any more successful than he was.”

  I had to juggle the phone a bit more when I got out to close and lock the gate leading back to my house. I’d tried to do that a little more these days. Better safe than sorry.

  “I have faith in you,” she told me and, as corny as it sounds, I found it comforting.

  “I’ll try not to let you down,” I said lightly, a little embarrassed that it had felt so good to hear.

  “Make sure you don’t,” she joked back. “When do you think you’ll be done?” she asked and then quickly added, “I know you can’t give me a guarantee.”

  “Let me meet with these folks and find out if we’ve identified our victim. I’ll know better what my day is going to be like after that.”

  Pete was leaning against his car, a toothpick in his mouth, talking to one of the local hay farmers. Hank Parrish drove a truck that looked like it was a miracle it ever started and wore jeans that were just one wash from falling apart, but he owned several thousand acres of prime hay fields.

  Pete pointed to me and Hank followed him over to my car.

  “Mr. Parrish, how you doing today?”

  “Getting ready for spring. How’s your dad?”

  “He’s been better,” I said as Pete got into the passenger side.

  “Tell him I’ll be around in a day or two. Might make him feel better,” Hank said, lifting his arm in farewell and walking off.

  “What was that about?” Pete asked.

  “Mr. Parrish helped Dad with his last two campaigns for sheriff. I guess he’s going to make a contribution to Dad’s reelection. That will cheer him up a bit. Dad hates having to cold-call people for contributions, but these days it takes money to run any campaign.”

  “I know it doesn’t help that Maxwell threw his hat into the ring,” Pete said. Dad had been fuming about Charles Maxwell, Calhoun’s chief of police, running against him ever since he found out.

  “Exactly.”

  Pete gave me the directions and we headed to a community just south of Calhoun.

  The house was set back off of the road on a slight rise. A well-kept yard of at least five acres framed the large modern structure. A flagpole with an American flag formed the centerpiece of the driveway.

  The front door opened before we were out of the car and an anxious-looking woman in her mid-fifties, dressed professionally, stood with her hands nervously rubbing each other.

  “What’s happened? The officer wouldn’t tell us anything, just that investigators would come and talk to us.”

  “Can we go inside?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She turned and we followed her into a house that was as immaculate inside as out. A tall straight-backed man with an ebony complexion stood waiting in the living room. He stepped forward and extended a hand.

  “Martin Grey,” he said, and Pete and I introduced ourselves in turn.

  “I’m sorry, Alisha Grey,” the woman said, her hands stopping their nervous massage long enough to shake hands.

  Pete and I exchanged looks. We had both seen the section of the living room set up as an honor wall for our victim. Most of the awards didn’t look like the kind they give just for participation. I saw large trophies for both golf and tennis, and behind them were pictures of their daughter draped with various medals.

  “I’m afraid that we have some very bad news,” was the lame platitude that came out of my mouth.

  Mrs. Grey began to hyperventilate. “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head and sinking into a chair.

  Pete had taken a picture of the necklace and, even though it seemed obvious that we had the right woman, he showed the picture to Mr. Grey.

  “Do you recognize this necklace?”

  “Where is she? Is she at the hospital?” he asked, desperate for us to
give him a little hope.

  “I’m afraid that we found this on a woman who was…” Pete could hardly bring himself to tell them. “Deceased.”

  Mr. Grey began to pace up and down the room. You cannot predict how people are going to react to such devastating, life-altering news, but most people fit into several categories. Mr. Grey was heading solidly for angry denial.

  “What the hell are you saying? What bullshit is this? My daughter isn’t some crack whore. You’re crazy. You cops are all alike. Think that any black person is going to get shot down in a gang fight.”

  “Please, Mr. Grey, it isn’t like that,” Pete said as the man continued to pump himself up, the veins beginning to bulge in his neck.

  “Don’t tell me what it’s like. You’ve made a big mistake. You need to go out there and find my daughter.” He got into Pete’s face and pointed outside.

  I stepped forward, trying to take some of the heat off of Pete. “No one would be happier to find out that this is a mistake than we would. But I saw the body last night. There is a very strong resemblance to the woman in those pictures,” I said, pointing to the honor wall of photos.

  For just a moment, he followed my finger and saw his beautiful daughter smiling broadly in tennis outfits and golf shirts. Something got through to him.

  “I want to see her,” he stated. He was calmer, but you could see the waves of emotion that he was holding back.

  “Of course. We can go right now.” I couldn’t blame him. His demand was reasonable and understandable, and I wasn’t going to put up any road blocks. “We’ll be glad to drive both of you to the… hospital.”

  “I’ll drive.” He turned to his wife and took her arm, gently helping her up off of the couch.

  “We’ll need to ask you some questions afterward,” I told him.

  “First, I want to see this person you think is my Jillian,” he said flatly.

  Pete and I went back out to the car while the Greys left through the garage. As the garage door lifted, I saw the Marines bumper sticker and tag frame on their car and understood a little more about Mr. Grey.

  The visit to the morgue was horrible, as these experiences usually were. Her mother broke down completely, to the point that I thought a doctor was going to have to be called in for her. But Mr. Grey managed to lift her up off of the floor and, after talking gently to her, wiping her tears and holding her, he was able to get her back on her feet.

  Pete and I led them to a small security office near the morgue where we could ask them questions. I hated having to press them for answers at a time like this, but we didn’t have a choice.

  “Where did Jillian work?” Pete started.

  “Homegrown Foods in Tallahassee,” Mr. Grey said. “She’s the produce manager there. It’s a big job. They only sell locally grown organic food, and her job is to make sure that the sellers aren’t cheating. She’d even drive out and check the farms. She liked to say it isn’t cheap, but it’s real. I guess a lot of places claim to sell local food, but cheat or just out-and-out lie. She could have done anything. Jillian was cum laude from FAMU. I’d have gladly paid for her college, but she got a sports scholarship. Her degree was in nutrition.” He finally stopped. You could physically feel the pride that he had in his daughter.

  “Did she go to work yesterday?”

  “Yes. I saw her leave around eight o’clock. That was the routine. She got up, exercised and then went to work.”

  “But she didn’t come home?”

  “I don’t know. Neither one of us saw her after she left in the morning.” He looked over at his wife, who was staring down at her hands that were clenched on top of the table. She hadn’t spoken a word or acknowledged anyone else since we left the viewing room.

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No. She lived in the apartment above the garage. It has a separate door. We didn’t realize anything was wrong until the owner of Homegrown Foods called us and asked if everything was okay. That’s when I went and checked. Once I saw that her car wasn’t there, I called you all.” Mr. Grey said everything as if he was testifying in front of Congress. He’d pushed his emotions down and was letting his professional demeanor take over.

  “Had she complained about anyone following her, or strange men hanging around the store?”

  “Nothing. And she would have told one of us. When Jillian was younger, we moved quite a bit and sometimes lived on military bases where there were a lot of young men. I made sure that she knew how to protect herself. I drilled into her the importance of situational awareness.”

  “So no phone calls or troublesome texts?”

  “No. She seemed fine. Not worried about anything.”

  “But you didn’t always see her for more than a hello in the morning, is that right?”

  “On the weekend we almost always spent time together. I grill out every Sunday, and Jillian is always there unless she’s out of town. Of course, the store is closed on Sunday.”

  “She loved the store.” Her mother spoke for the first time. We all waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “And the owner was good to her. They’d talked about her becoming a partner,” her dad continued.

  “What about a boyfriend?” I didn’t think that a boyfriend had killed her, but if she had one we’d need to talk with him. And there was always the very slight chance that this murder wasn’t connected to the others. Though I didn’t believe it for a minute…

  “No. Jillian didn’t spend much time with boys.”

  “Girlfriends?”

  I saw Mr. Grey bristle at the question as though I’d suggested something improper. There are still some folks that feel that way.

  “No. She wasn’t like that. Look, I know it may seem odd that she wasn’t hanging out with some boy, but she just didn’t have the time. Jillian tried having boyfriends when she was in school, but she complained that they either distracted her from her training and studies, or they resented the fact that she spent so much time practicing and working on her classes.”

  “I asked her all the time when she was going to find a husband. And she always said, ‘Momma, there’s plenty of time for that.’” Mrs. Grey let the sadness of that statement hang in the air.

  “Well, what about friends?”

  “Like I said, we moved around a lot when I was a Marine. She made friends, and there’s a few that she still keeps up with, but it’s not like when you live in the same town all your life,” he stated.

  “She went out with the folks from her job sometimes. After they closed, they’d go to a restaurant or sometimes a bar,” Mrs. Grey said.

  Pete and I looked at each other. There wasn’t much point in continuing to torture the couple. We’d have more questions, but for now the kindest thing we could do for them was to let them go home and grieve in private. We got their contact information and permission to search her apartment above the garage, but there wasn’t much else we could do. It seemed clear that Jillian was an open person who lived for her work. There was always the possibility that she had some secret life that her family didn’t know about, but I didn’t think it likely.

  We walked out with the Greys and, before parting, asked them not to go into her apartment until our crime scene techs had gone over it. Pete and I also vowed that we’d do everything in our power to catch her killer.

  Mr. Grey had one more question to ask once his wife was in the car and out of earshot. “Is this connected to the Swamp Hacker murders?” he asked.

  I had no choice but to tell him the truth, if for no other reason than that reporters would soon be all over the story, if they weren’t already waiting for the Greys at home. “Yes. I know that’s going to make it tougher on you and your wife. The reporters are going to be pretty aggressive.”

  “Tougher. I…” His eyes got moist and he just turned and got into his car.

  The sun was shining and the air was crisp, but the weather didn’t do much to improve our mood. Pete and I decided to stop by Homegrown Foods whi
le we were in Tallahassee.

  “Thoughts?” I asked Pete, who was looking out the window, too downhearted to text.

  “I think everyone’s right and the psycho is going psycho. But this one may be our break. The attack doesn’t fit the pattern,” he said.

  “We haven’t found the car. Maybe it does fit.” I played devil’s advocate, but I felt that he was right. Something was different about this one.

  “She’s not his normal victim. Jillian lived in an upscale house. Had a solid job. I can’t see her hanging out in a bad neighborhood.”

  “Again, we haven’t found her car.”

  “But she didn’t have a boyfriend, certainly didn’t seem like the type to be taking drugs, didn’t have any relatives in the area.”

  “So her parents said.” I held up my hand. “I believe them, but…” I let that linger. “Until we find the car… Maybe she was taking someone home or stopped at the wrong minute market.”

  “It’s possible.” He called dispatch on his phone and had them pull up Jillian’s vehicle registration. “This is a priority. If anyone spots it, they are not to approach it and should call me or Macklin immediately.” They must have asked if he was talking about me or Dad because he said, “Either.”

  “Call Tolland and tell him what’s going on, ask him to put out the BOLO on the car too, and tell him he can meet us at Homegrown if he has the time.” I’d talked to him when I was on the way to meet Pete, and I knew that he had also spoken to Dr. Darzi.

  As horrified as we both were at this murder, we had to wonder if it would provide the break we were looking for.

  “We’ll need to talk to all of our suspects again,” Pete stated.

  “Yep, and find out if they have an alibi for last night.” We had a precise point in time when we knew where the killer was. This gave us a tool that could be used to eliminate some of the suspects, and perhaps focus attention on others. Sadly, in serial murder cases, each additional murder is welcomed for the information it can provide.

  Chapter Twenty-Two