by Willow Rose
The doctors said she would never be the same as she used to be. Still, I was determined to make the most of our time together while she was still here. But, boy, I missed hearing her voice. I missed hearing her laugh and seeing her dance with our daughter in the kitchen downstairs. I missed everything about her, but most of all, I missed looking into her deep brown eyes. I hated that she was just lying there in that bed, completely lifeless alongside a urinary catheter, pill boxes, and her feeding tube.
“There you go,” I said and wiped the last of the drool away, then tossed the napkin, biting back my tears. “You’re as good as new.”
There was a small knock on the door, and Jean, my next-door neighbor, poked her head in.
“I think Josie is ready for school soon,” she said. “I can take over and give Camille her bath now?”
I smiled when seeing her. Jean wasn’t only my neighbor; she was also my savior and helping hand. She was a registered nurse and helped me out with Camille as much as I needed. She was also Camille’s best friend and had been very close to her before the overdose. At least, we thought she was, but she had been every bit as surprised as I was to learn that Camille had started doing drugs again.
I walked to her and hugged her. “Thank you, Jean. You’re the best. I don’t think I would know how to get by without you. I’m sure Camille knows how much you do for her and us, and if she could, she’d thank you.”
That made her blush. “Don’t give me that,” she said and waved me away. “You’ll ruin my makeup. I just got myself ready for my shift and all the doctors I plan on flirting with today. I won’t have you ruin that. Go and take care of your daughter, and then I’ll have a look at that shiner afterward.”
Chapter 6
“God, please bless this food and the people eating it.”
I held my daughter’s hand in mine while saying the prayer, then opened my eyes and looked at her while I added:
“And please help Josie not to be so addicted to her darn phone.”
I sent her a look as she realized I had caught her with the phone in her other hand.
“Busted,” I said and reached out my hand. “Hand it over—no phones at the table. You know the rules. And especially not while we pray.”
“But it’s just breakfast, Dad. It’s not like it’s dinner or anything.”
“Hand it over, please.”
Josie sighed and handed me the phone. I put it in my pocket, and she gave me a look that told me she didn’t think this was fair treatment. I didn’t care. She was on that thing all the time. Sitting at the table was the one time I wanted her full attention.
“So, what’s up for today?” I asked and served her some eggs and a bagel. “Any big tests?”
She shrugged. “Only math.”
“Only math, huh?”
“It’s not that hard, Dad.”
I stared at my daughter. She was in the eighth grade, doing ninth grade advanced class math. I didn’t do that when I was her age. Josie was doing really well in school, something I was certain she got from her mother. Camille could have done anything with her life, and almost did. She went to FIT, Florida Institute of Technology, for engineering and would have finished her education if someone—that being the monster of a boyfriend at the time—had not introduced her to crack one day. After that, she had ended up on the streets of Miami until I picked her up one day when we raided an abandoned building in Overtown. I took one look at her and knew I loved her. I still did, despite it all.
“Really? So you’re gonna ace it, I take it.”
She smiled cunningly. “Don’t I always?”
I chuckled and drank coffee, hoping it might soon kick in so I could feel more awake. I had been out until midnight the night before, while my dad, who lived right down the street, hung out with Josie, so she didn’t have to be alone.
“So, what happened to your eye?” she asked while shoveling in eggs. She had a healthy appetite, on the verge of insatiable, which was probably needed in order for her to keep growing the way she did. She was closing in on five feet eleven at the age of only fourteen years old. There was no saying how tall she was going to get. That part, she didn’t get from her mother. That was my humble contribution. But that was about it. The rest of her was her mother’s spitting image, especially her good looks. Josie was gorgeous beyond what seemed possible. Her creamy caramel skin, her light green sparkling eyes, and thick curly hair made most people compare her to a young Tyra Banks. I’d rather compare her to Camille, the most beautiful woman to have walked this earth, in my eyes.
Only she was too good for it.
“Dad?”
I glared at her. I didn’t want to answer her question and explain what I had been up to the night before, so instead, I finished my cup and looked at my watch.
“You should get going,” I said as I got up and grabbed both our plates. “Bus leaves in two minutes, and you still haven’t brushed your teeth.”
Chapter 7
“Ouch!”
I jumped up. Jean put her hand on her hip and tilted her head. “If you don’t sit still, how am I supposed to help you?”
“I don’t want your help,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh, and I’m a secret Russian spy. Now, please sit back down and let me finish this. Your attacker split open the skin above your eyebrow, and I need to close it with these strips. I can’t do that if you keep whining. I told you to hold that cold pack on your eye while I fixed this.”
I sat back down and tried to relax while pressing the cold pack against my black eye. Jean placed butterfly strips on my skin, pulling it, so it hurt.
“Sit still; I said. Now, tell me something…how did this happen again?”
“It’s none of your business,” I mumbled.
“None of my business? Right now, it seems to be a whole lot of my business. Patching you up has been all of my business lately. Were you out patrolling the streets on your own again?”
“Maybe?”
“And what exactly does your boss say to you running around the streets at night like some madman, getting beaten up, chasing drug dealers?”
I looked up at her. “He tells me not to?”
“Exactly. Then why don’t you stop? You’re never going to find the guy that sold Camille those drugs. He’s probably dead from an overdose himself anyway.”
I grumbled as she placed another strip on my sore skin. “I might not be able to find the guy that did this to Camille, but I can stop others from doing it. I can stop them from selling this stuff to young kids and ruining their lives.”
“Uh-huh…and didn’t your boss take you out of the narcotics department?” she asked, giving me that look again. Jean had dark blue eyes like me and dark brown hair that she kept in a ponytail so it wouldn’t fall in her face while she took care of patients. She was athletically built and a lot stronger than you’d think. She had been my rock through all of this, the past three years, and for that, I owed her everything.
“He did…but…”
“And why do you think he did that, huh, Harry? Was it because you were doing such a great job?”
“No, but…”
“No, he took you off the streets because you couldn’t control yourself—because you kept beating people up and get beaten yourself. He was afraid you were going to get yourself killed one day out in those streets. Now, how about you listen to that boss of yours and don’t get yourself killed, how about that? Because there are people here who need you, Harry. People who wouldn’t get by without you.”
“So, focus on the people I still have and don’t run, thinking I can fix things that have already happened, is that what you’re saying? Thanks, but we’ve had this conversation before, Jean, and I still don’t think it’s any of your business.”
Jean answered with a grunt, then finished me up, and then the display on my phone lit up.
“That’s the third time this morning,” she said. “Don’t you think you should answer that?”
I
stared at the display, then put it down. “It’s just my boss. I’ll talk to him when I get there.”
Chapter 8
“Nice of you to show your pretty face for once.”
Major Fowler gave me that look above his glasses. He was sitting behind his desk, looking through a file when I walked in. He glared at his watch for a brief second. “Only two hours late. I think that might be a new record for you, Harry…Geez, what happened to your face? You know what? I have a feeling I don’t want to know.”
Fowler leaned back in his leather chair. His salt and pepper hair had been cut very short, probably by the same barber he had used forever, even before he and I had become friends twenty years ago when we were both rookies at the Miami-Dade Police Department. Fowler had climbed the career ladder and become a major, while I was still the man on the ground, now serving in the homicide unit.
“Listen, Fowler, I am…”
Fowler lifted both of his bushy eyebrows. “No, Hunter, you listen to me. I can’t keep covering for you, making excuses for you. You come and go as you please, and you’re never at the briefings in the mornings. I know it’s been a tough time for you and your family, and I have given you all the rope I can, but at some point, it has to stop. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with you, especially not on a day like today when we need everyone at the top of their game.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
He threw out his arms. “If you’d been at the briefing this morning, you’d know.”
“Or if you tell me now, I’d know too,” I said.
He sighed, tapping his pen on the desk. He pulled out a photo from the file and slid it across the desk for me to see.
“Four teenage girls were found dead last night.”
He grabbed another photo and showed it to me. “Three of them were found on this boat anchored outside the yacht club; the fourth washed up by the yacht club’s seawall. Two of them had their throats slit; one had been harpooned in the heart, while the fourth had drowned. We don’t know if she drowned while trying to escape or if someone killed her. They had borrowed the boat from one of their parents and had taken it out to fish, the father said. The first body, the girl that drowned, was found just before midnight by the personnel that was closing down the club for the night. Two men spotted something in the water and rushed to see what it was, thinking it could be a manatee or a dolphin. When they saw the girl in the water, they called nine-one-one, and it didn’t take the responding officers from our South District Station long to realize the girl came from the boat they could see out on the water. When they got out there, they found the three others. A pure blood bath, they said. Gonzalez is still throwing up, last thing I heard.”
I stared at the photos, my eyes scanning them. “Looks like the harpooned girl died first, so you’ll have to assume the killer was standing here, at the stern of the boat,” I said and pointed. “Before the girl there ran toward her, probably because they were best friends, maybe still assuming that the harpoon went off by accident. But then the killer pulled a knife and slit her throat. That’s why her body is pushed a little further back. The killer was making his way, killing them one after another. The third one, the girl here, was trying to escape before she was harpooned in the leg, as you can see, so she couldn’t run anymore. The killer took his time to pull out the harpoon from the first girl and reload; that was why she made it all the way to the edge of the boat before she was stopped. My guess is the fourth one made a jump for it into the water, where the killer probably jumped in after her and pulled her under the water. A guy like him wouldn’t risk her surviving to talk. I say you’re looking for a diver, someone who knows his way around spearfishing and how to gut a fish. If you look at the way the throat was cut, the incision here and here, it resembles the way you’d cut the head off a fish. But I guess that doesn’t narrow it down by much around here, where fishing and diving are common hobbies. Anyway, if you want my take on it, then I’d say he came onto the boat climbing up from the stern side while the kids were hanging out, drinking, and weren’t looking in his direction. Once they heard him, the girl here, the first one, rushed to him, probably because it was her father’s boat they had borrowed, and she felt responsible. Then she was shot in the heart. This was an assassination. And it was carefully planned.”
Fowler folded his hands on the desk and gave me a look, then nodded with a small smile.
“You know I have no way of telling if you’re right or not,” Fowler said. “Forensics is still working out there, and it’ll take a few days before we know these kinds of details.”
“I am right, and you know it.”
He nodded, chuckling. “You always had a nose for the details. That’s why I can’t fire you. You’re just too darn good of a detective.”
That made me smile. Compliments from Fowler were rare.
“So…you want me on the case?” I asked.
Chapter 9
“Not so fast,” Fowler said, shaking his head. “There’s more to the story.”
“Isn’t there always?”
Fowler nodded. “True, but this is more than usual. Do you remember the story of Lucy Lockwood?”
“Sure. It’s only been what…a year?” I asked. “She was raped at some school dance, right?”
“She went to prom and, after the party, she went to the beach with her friends, where she claimed a guy raped her while a bunch of kids watched. The guy later called her dad using her phone and told him that his daughter was ‘good at sex.’ The dad drove down there and found her in the sand all alone. She reported it as a rape and claimed the guy had forced her.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “What do you mean claimed? I don’t understand. You don’t believe her?”
“I…well…”
“Who wouldn’t believe a seventeen-year-old girl who says she was raped?” I asked, enraged.
“Listen, I know this is a touchy subject since your…your sister was…”
“Raped?” I said. “You can say it out loud, you know. Yes, she was raped when we were teenagers, and now she suffers mental health issues as a result. It’s not something anyone would joke around with. And, no, the police didn’t believe her either. Told her it was her own fault for dressing the way she did and flirting with the boy who raped her. Don’t be like them, Fowler. Don’t be like those jerks who told my sister it was her own doing.”
Fowler sighed and rubbed his stubble. “Anyway, the investigation back then didn’t lead to anything, and a judge dismissed the Lockwood case. There simply was no evidence that she didn’t consent; none of the witnesses would say that it wasn’t with her consent. They didn’t even admit to seeing it happen.”
“And the bruises? They didn’t tell another story?” I asked.
“You know how it is. You can’t argue that it wasn’t a part of the act. Witnesses said they saw her flirt with him, act up to him, leading him on at the party.”
I shook my head. “You’re too much.”
Fowler looked down at his papers for a brief second, then back up at me. “The kid had good expensive lawyers who were able to rip the case apart. We did what we could for her, but it just wasn’t good enough. Anyway, the thing is, the four girls who turned up dead last night, they are all on the list of witnesses from back then. When Lucy arrived at the hospital, she gave a list of ten names of people who she claimed watched the rape. Last week, another girl, Lisa Turner, turned up dead in a dumpster, also stabbed to death with a fishing knife. They all go to the same high school, and, according to Lucy, they all were on the beach that night when she claims to have been attacked.”
I nodded. “And now you’re afraid that someone is killing them because of what happened?”
He nodded. “Yes. Morales and his team are talking to the dad today.”
“Obviously, but what about the girl? What about Lucy?”
Fowler took off his glasses and wiped sweat from his upper lip. “That’s the thing. She went missing eight months ago. Right after the judge dis
missed her case, she disappeared. Her parents reported her missing, and we had a search party out and everything, but she was never found. We finally concluded she had run away from home because of what happened. It’s not uncommon in cases like these.”
I cleared my throat, sending him a suspicious look. “You don’t seriously think that Lucy is killing these kids?”
He exhaled. “I don’t know what to think, to be honest. But I do know that she has the best motive.”
Chapter 10
“I take it you want me on the case of finding who killed those five girls, right?”
