The Girl in the Woods

by Chris Culver

  “Of course. I’m her sister.”

  I blinked a few times. Maybe Trisha was right. Maybe most women did talk to their sisters.

  “Did she confide anything else to you?”

  Alma looked to her daughter and smiled. “Mommy needs to put you down now, okay?”

  The little girl nodded, and Alma lowered her to the ground. For a moment, the girl hung onto her mother’s pants, then Alma looked down with a gentle smile on her face.

  “Go watch Daniel Tiger. Mommy and this woman need to talk.”

  The little girl cast me a wary glance before running into the house. Alma looked at me once more.

  “What do you want to know, Detective?”

  “Laura was working a case before she died. Do you know anything about it?”

  Alma crossed her arms and shook her head. “Work was one thing we couldn’t talk about. She took attorney-client privilege seriously.”

  My heart felt like it had shrunk, and my shoulders slumped.

  “Did she ever mention Reid Chemical?” I asked, hoping to mask my disappointment. Alma chuckled a little and furrowed her brow.

  “That’s where she worked.”

  Everything ceased moving at once. I raised my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “She was the general counsel at Reid Chemical. She even planned to buy a house in St. Augustine.”

  My entire body tingled, but I tried not to let my surprise show. “Can I come in? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  38

  Alma pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes before taking a step back.

  “All right,” she said. “We can talk inside.”

  She led me to a kitchen in the back of the home. A pair of French doors opened to the backyard, while an archway led to a family room with a television and couches. Alma’s little girl sat on a big red couch and watched Sesame Street.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing toward a small round breakfast table in the kitchen. I sat down.

  “I would love a cup if you’ve got some made,” I said. She nodded before pouring two mugs of coffee and sitting down. I took a sip. It tasted sweet and nutty, and I appreciated the caffeine. “Thank you.”

  She made a noncommittal noise in her throat and watched her daughter for a moment before focusing on me.

  “Why are you here?”

  I put my mug down and took out a notepad from my jacket.

  “You said Laura worked for Reid Chemical.”

  Alma nodded and then sighed. “You don’t seem very well informed about your own case. It doesn’t fill me with confidence you’ll find her killer.”

  “We’re making steps,” I said, nodding. “I thought Laura ran her own private practice.”

  “She did, but she was closing it down,” said Alma. “She liked being her own boss, but after finding out she was pregnant, she wanted something more stable.”

  “She didn’t even tell her assistant.”

  Alma’s eyes flashed an angry black as she picked up her coffee mug. “She didn’t get the chance. That’s what happens when you’re murdered.”

  I nodded and gave her a moment before continuing.

  “When did she take the job at Reid Chemical?”

  Alma crossed her arms. “Four weeks ago.”

  Aldon hired her six weeks ago. If she got the job at Reid Chemical four weeks ago, we had a problem. Since finding her body in the woods, I had thought of Laura as a victim. I thought she was innocent and that she had died because she was brave enough to fight a major corporation on behalf of her client.

  But she wasn’t.

  She was one of our bad guys. Aldon came to her for help, and she sold him out for a paycheck. Part of me didn’t blame her. She was twenty-six and pregnant, and she wrote wills for three hundred bucks a pop out of an office in a strip mall. Even though she owned her own home, she likely had student loans to take care of. A cushy general counsel’s job at Reid Chemical would have seemed like the perfect solution to her problems.

  But now Aldon McKenzie and his wife were dead, and so was Laura. So was Austin Wright. So was Nicole Bryant. Sasquatch would never be the same. Everything came back to that company.

  “Do you recognize the name Aldon McKenzie?” I asked.

  Alma shook her head as I stood.

  “No. Why?”

  “Just checking,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”

  “What’s going on, Detective?” asked Alma.

  “I’m working a case,” I said, retracing my steps through the kitchen. “I’ll see myself out.”

  “Detective?” she called.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard her. She didn’t deserve my anger, but I couldn’t help but feel it. All this time, I had pictured Laura Rojas as a crusader, someone willing to fight for the underdog. All this time, I was wrong. Aldon McKenzie cut her a check and gave her evidence against his employer believing she would protect him. Instead, she sold him out. And then she died for it.

  She didn’t deserve to die, but if you sit on the bad guys’ bench, you shouldn’t be surprised when they call you into the game.

  I got in my truck and squeezed the steering wheel.

  “Shit,” I said. I twisted my keys in the ignition and headed out. Other drivers crowded the surface streets, but traffic thinned as I pulled onto the interstate. There, the monotony of the drive calmed me some and allowed me to focus on my case. When I became a detective, I knew I’d have cases I couldn’t solve, but I hadn’t expected one like this. I had no physical evidence, I had no murder weapon, and I had no more idea who killed Laura today than I had a week ago. Not only that, my original victim wasn’t the innocent victim I had thought she was. She got this whole thing started.

  About half an hour into my drive, my cell phone rang. I answered without looking at the screen.

  “What?”

  The caller hesitated before speaking.

  “Detective?”

  The voice belonged to Darius Adams, the accountant we had hired to look over Laura’s files.

  “Yeah, it’s Joe Court,” I said, softening my voice. “Sorry if I was a little gruff. I’ve had a lousy morning. What can I do for you?”

  “Sorry to hear about your morning,” he said. “I wanted to call you with an update about the files you gave me. I’ve found something. You okay to talk for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, doubtful that anything he had to tell me would get me anywhere with this case after everything else had failed. “What did you find?”

  “Bear in mind, I’m not a chemist. I can answer questions about the numbers, but you need to talk to a chemist about the nuts and bolts of all this.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding as my curiosity built. “Go on.”

  “Someone at Reid Chemical has misappropriated almost four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of two restricted chemical compounds. One is called 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine, and the other is N-phenethyl-4-piperidone.”

  I leaned back on the SUV’s firm, leather chair. I didn’t know what the chemicals were, but I understood cash. If someone stole four hundred grand from me, I’d be pissed. I might even want to kill somebody. This may have been what Aldon found. I blinked and drew in a breath as I tried to fit this new piece into my puzzle.

  “I took chemistry in college, but I’ve never heard of those chemicals.”

  “They’re the chemical precursors for fentanyl,” said Adams. “I looked them up. Someone at Reid Chemical is making some very dangerous drugs.”

  My heart beat a little faster.

  “Do we know who stole them?”

  “If the invoices are right, we do,” said Adams. “The executive vice president of the company. Logan Reid.”

  I shook my head.

  “That can’t be right. Logan Reid is twenty-one years old. He’s in college. He’s not the vice president of the company.”

  “College student or not, every piece of evidence I’ve got points to him.”

  Logan was the f
all guy. That was why Laura led him on and sent him those dirty pictures. She was setting him up. That bitch.

  “Could you talk to my colleagues about this?”

  “You’ll get a bill for it, but sure.”

  “I’m on the road now. Let me get back to my station. I’ll set up a time there. Thanks for your work on this.”

  “Anytime,” he said. “You drive safe, Detective.”

  I thanked him and then hung up. The phone call might as well have injected adrenaline into my veins. I almost smiled. The odds in my murder case had always been against me. Without physical evidence to tie a suspect to the crime scene or a murder weapon, my best option to send somebody to prison for Laura Rojas’s death was a confession. This was almost as good.

  Mason Stewart couldn’t run from this. A federal narcotics manufacturing charge would send him to prison for the rest of his life. I had him. More than that, we had official company records—seized from the office of their general counsel, if Alma was right. We had the whole company in a vise. Once we took them down, we could move on to their distribution network. They weren’t selling the drugs themselves. They had help. This would be a good day.

  My head felt light, and my chest felt loose as I drove back to St. Augustine.

  “I’ve got you, asshole,” I said, smiling.

  When I got into the office, I called Detective Delgado, Shaun Deveraux, and Darius Adams for a meeting to go over what I’d found. In the meantime, I tried to organize the case in my head. Six weeks ago—or maybe a little earlier—Aldon McKenzie discovered that someone at his workplace was stealing chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl. He then contacted an attorney, Laura Rojas. Laura investigated and confirmed Aldon’s findings.

  Instead of working with Aldon to protect his interests, she turned on him. She went to Reid Chemical with her findings, and they offered her a job in their general counsel’s office—probably on the condition that she destroy her evidence. Newly pregnant and still unsure of her future, she accepted.

  I was a little unsure what happened next. Maybe Laura realized she couldn’t cover this up. Or maybe Mason Stewart just got paranoid. Either way, the company added Logan Reid to their staff as a vice president. He was just a kid, so he didn’t know his asshole from his elbow. Suddenly, though, a beautiful, sophisticated woman was talking to him and sending him naked pictures of herself. All the while, she was setting him up to take a fall so she and her boss wouldn’t.

  Only, Mason didn’t trust Laura. She had already turned on one client for money. Not only that, she didn’t destroy the evidence in her possession. She made herself dangerous. I didn’t know who pulled the trigger to kill her, but I would bet Mason Stewart ordered the hit. Then he ordered Aldon’s murder. The other names on Laura’s list—Austin Wright, Mike Brees, and Ruby Laskey—must have known more than they should have, so Mason ordered them killed, too.

  It was still just the outline of a case, but it would be enough to get the DEA and US Attorney’s Office involved. They’d take over and send everybody involved to prison for the rest of their natural lives. They might even solve our murder cases for us. This wasn’t how I anticipated things going, but I’d take it.

  At eleven, Deveraux, Delgado, and Adams met me in the conference room, where I laid out my case. Delgado might have dismissed me, but it was hard to ignore the evidence Adams presented. By the time he and I finished talking at noon, Deveraux was already on the phone with the US Attorney’s Office in St. Louis to schedule a meeting.

  I left the room while Delgado and Deveraux dug into the evidence with Mr. Adams. I had important strings to tie up. Downstairs, I smiled hello to Trisha at the front desk before taking out my cell phone. Logan Reid’s phone didn’t even ring before dropping me to voicemail.

  “Mr. Reid, it’s Detective Joe Court. It’s very important that you call me or come down to my station. There are things we need to talk about. It’d be helpful if you had an attorney. Thanks.”

  I hung up and waited a moment to see whether he’d call me back. He didn’t. With as many dead people as we had so far, I felt nervous, so I walked to my truck and climbed in. Waterford College wasn’t far, so I drove over and parked outside the Public Safety Office. Rusty Peterson, the director of public safety, was behind the desk.

  “Hey,” I said. “Remember me?”

  “Hard to forget when you come by every day,” he said, smiling. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  I leaned against the counter.

  “I need to talk to Logan Reid.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “More than he could realize, but not from me,” I said.

  Rusty hesitated. “Is there a threat to my campus?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t think so, but if we don’t find him soon, there’s a reasonable shot somebody will help him disappear for an extended period.”

  “How extended?” asked Rusty, lowering his chin.

  “Eternity.”

  He grunted and picked up his phone to call his team. I stayed with him for about an hour while five public safety officers scoured the campus, but neither Logan nor his car was on the grounds. As before, his phone dropped me to voicemail the instant I called it. This time, I left him another message requesting a return call, but I didn’t expect a response. Hopefully, they hadn’t killed him yet. He could help my case.

  I left the college at about one and drove back to my station, where I caught up on paperwork until five that evening. As the evening’s swing shift trickled in, I stood up and stretched. I had done everything I could. I hadn’t found Laura’s murderer, but I had taken the case as far as I could. Other people had it now, and they’d do their best.

  I nodded greetings to several people on my way out the door and headed to my car with my head held high. On the way home, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up bread, eggs, butter, and a sandwich from the deli for dinner. With the case over, life would settle into a new normal under interim Sheriff George Delgado. I didn’t know what the future held, but I still had a job I believed in. That was enough for now.

  As I approached my house, I slowed when I saw a white Mercedes in my driveway. An unfamiliar woman sat on the rocking chair on my front porch. She wore a fashionable black dress and impeccable makeup. I parked beside her car and stepped out of my truck with my hand over my firearm. The woman stood.

  “Detective Court,” she said, walking toward me. I held up a hand flat toward her as if I were directing traffic. She stopped in her tracks. “I’m Debra Reid. I’m Logan Reid’s mother.”

  My muscles relaxed, but I didn’t take my hand from my firearm.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Reid?”

  “I need you to help me find my son,” she said, taking a step toward me again. “I’m worried that my husband has done something stupid.”

  My shoulders relaxed, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, I am, too,” I said. “I stopped by his college—”

  A shadow moved in my peripheral vision.

  I stopped speaking midsentence and whirled around. Before I could even focus, pain exploded across my head. I gasped and fell to my knees. Then my assailant pressed a cloth to my mouth. It smelled sweet, but it had a chemical undertone. I reached for my gun and drew in a breath to scream without thinking. That sweet, thick, chemical odor flowed into my lungs.

  My limbs grew weak, and my vision narrowed. I pulled my firearm from its holster, but I didn’t have the strength to lift it. I couldn’t think or focus.

  My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and my vision grew darker and darker until the world disappeared.

  39

  My mouth felt dry, and my head throbbed as my eyes fluttered open. I was in a dark, wood-paneled room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Bookshelves lined the walls, while my chair faced a heavy wooden desk. The sun had long since set, so a dim desk lamp served as the room’s only light source. I blinked hard, orienting myself to the surroundings. I was sitting on a sturdy wooden chair. A rough rop
e held my hands behind me, while something similar bound my ankles to the legs of the chair. My head throbbed.

  They had taken my weapon, but I still had the holster on my belt. My keys, purse, and cell phone were gone. This was bad. No one would even realize I was missing until tomorrow morning when I didn’t show up for work. I wriggled my wrists, trying to free them from the rope, but that only tightened the knots.

  “Hey, looks like Sleeping Beauty is awake.”

  I held my breath. The speaker was behind me, and his voice sounded almost jovial. It was the security consultant from Reid Chemical.

  “If you kill me, you might as well kiss your life goodbye because you’re dead. You can’t get away with killing a police officer.”

  “Your threat’s misdirected, sweetheart. How’d they get you? They stabbed me with a paralytic and threw me in the back of an SUV.”

  I turned my head, hoping to catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye. Something moved, but it may have been one of my eyelashes. I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t know why he’d lie given the situation.

  “Chloroform or something like it,” I said. “They hit me in the head as I came home.”

  He grunted. “That sucks. Mason Stewart’s here, too. I think he’s still alive, but he hasn’t moved since they brought him in.”

  I nodded. A ton of questions floated through my mind, but they were for later. I was dead if I stayed here tied to a chair.

  “Are you tied up?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  “What’s your name again?” I asked. The desk was about ten feet in front of me, and the windows were another ten feet beyond that. The desktop held a coffee cup and a stack of papers, but no letter opener, knives, or scissors. This didn’t look good.

  “Nick Sumner,” he said. “It’s nice to be memorable.”

  I grunted. “How am I bound to this chair?”

  “Your hands are both tied with a rope, and that rope is wound around a slat in your chair. They bound your feet to the chair legs. I assume I’m tied up the same way, but I can’t see behind me.”