The Room Where It Happened

by Jason Letts

  The admission that she had something she was hiding put a lump in Tera’s throat. The answer was so close she could taste it.

  “It’s me, Mrs. Parkinson. I’m not here because I’m a cop. I’m here for Kim. And if I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t help.”

  She felt like everything was riding on Lucinda’s response. Tera needed to find a way to get through and reach the truth. The lady in the nightgown glared at her for a while. The scowl deepened, but Tera didn’t know what it meant.

  “Come along inside, girl. Never know who’s listening around here.”

  Lucinda left the doorframe and meandered into a dim hallway, seemingly going into one room before drifting into another. Tera nearly kicked a litter box on the floor that hadn’t been cleaned in some time. A glance in the kitchen showed her dusty cereal boxes, a sink full of dishes, and a broken window by the back door. Kim’s mother had gone into a dining room filled with boxes brimming with magazines, decades worth of People magazine from the looks of it.

  Tera set an arm on the backrest of one of the chairs.

  “I need to know what’s going on with him,” she said. Lucinda listed in place.

  “He’s just a deadbeat oaf who wouldn’t know a good idea if it dropped on his head.”

  The realization that Lucinda may have brought her all the way in here only to change her mind was aggravating, and she wondered how far she’d have to go for the truth.

  “I think he’s more than that. I suspect he’s the one who’s responsible for Kim’s death. That’s why he was there with the body, why his fingerprints are all over the room, why he was outside yelling for help so he could pin it on somebody else. But the why I don’t have is why he did it. And I can only get that from you,” she said.

  Tera looked Lucinda square in the eyes, trying to connect with her and get her to believe that she was there to help. But the woman was reeling from the news about Robert. She barred her teeth and shook her head.

  “That good-for-nothing piece of trash. Figures he’d go and destroy the only good thing that’d ever come from him. But even then it doesn’t change nothing. He knows he’s got me in a bind. I can’t say anything, not when his name is on my benefits too. I don’t have any place else to go.”

  Tera pursed her lips, feeling like she was so close. Having Lucinda dangle what she knew just out of reach was excruciating, but after all the concerns about how she’d be affected were central to why Tera had tried to keep the investigation off the books. But there was no hope for that now.

  “I’m going to make sure you’re not hung out to dry on this. It’s not your fault.”

  The woman eyed her warily, and the cat jumped away and disappeared within the piles of junk in the corner of the room. She shut her eyes like she was about to put her feet into freezing cold water.

  “You better be right about that, Tera, because without Robert and with my Kimmy gone there’s no one else for me to turn to. But what you said about Robert, I can see it. I wished it wasn’t so and it had been somebody else like everybody thought, but even if it’s shocked me I’m not surprised.”

  “What makes you say that?” Tera asked.

  Lucinda rapped her fingernails against one of the boxes.

  “Robert was always kind of a lowlife, but things changed about six months ago. He was just fed up with having nothing and wanted to get out. It happens to people, but it really hit him hard. Previously he’d play the scratchers or the lucky lottery, but when he got serious he turned to sports betting to try to dig himself out.

  “When he won that first time, he was hooked, but the trouble was he didn’t know what he was doing and made terrible picks. He started betting on credit with the wrong guys and got in deep, probably about $20,000. When he couldn’t pay, they came after him, but in addition to a beating they gave him a way out. Selling drugs. Come to find out he was miserable at that too. That’s when he turned to Kimmy.”

  Tera held her breath, bracing herself for the scalding news that Kim had been out there selling drugs with her father, as if it hadn’t been enough that she’d helped Chechy with his scheme.

  “No,” she mouthed the word, not wanting to believe it. They’d been better than that.

  “Kimmy ended up telling him she was selling it but gave him money out of her own pocket. I was furious about the whole thing, but there was nothing I could do. He’d become erratic and angry, so I’d long since thrown him out. I pretty much never saw the man anymore and would only hear about it when Kimmy came by.

  “But the money she gave him wasn’t enough for Robert. He kept pushing her and pushing her for more. Her job didn’t pay all that much, but Robert seemed to think he was entitled to everything she had, that she should give up her entire life to get him out of debt. It didn’t help that he was still gambling and losing some, so no matter what they did he never actually improved his position.

  “I can only imagine that Robert pushed Kimmy too far, and that all it would take was for her to say no one time for him to completely snap. Maybe the debtors offered him other ways to cover the losses and that’s why he had the gun.”

  Tera set both arms on the chair and bent down to lean her head against them. She didn’t want Lucinda to see her eyes welling up. Everything seemed to fit now, why Kim felt pressured to participate in Chechy’s scheme and why the drugs were just sitting in her desk drawer. Robert hadn’t even known they were there, believing they’d been sold on the streets. Kim had done her best to hold onto her integrity as she was assailed on all sides.

  The loss created a void in the pit of Tera’s stomach. It could’ve just as easily happened to her. The feeling of Lucinda rubbing her back some moments later felt strange, since she was the professional, not the one who’d been told that her former husband had killed her daughter. But Kim’s mother had already been awash in grief and depleted of any more tears. The wounds were fresh for Tera, who wiped her nose and stood up.

  “That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear,” she said. Lucinda brushed some hair away from Tera’s face.

  “It doesn’t look like it did you much good.”

  “No, it did,” Tera insisted, even though the ordeal Kim had dealt with still stung.

  “It might seem like I’m callous to the whole thing, but I’d see Robert hang for it if I could. I lived for that girl, and now she’s gone. If you’re looking for more, I can get you his address, a studio on Calumet Ave not far from the highway. He works late into the evenings and never comes home before stopping for a few drinks. You’d have all the time in the world to see that I’m not lying,” she said.

  “I may just do that,” Tera said. Just like she’d agreed with Brady, going through everything and collecting as much evidence as she could was the move they needed to make now. If there was something in his apartment, more drugs or weapons, she’d find it. Maybe they’d have everything together enough to make an arrest by the time he returned.

  “I always liked you, even though I didn’t see you all that much,” Lucinda said as Tera began feeling the tug to leave. “You weren’t like the other girls.”

  Tera stepped around a pile of dirty towels on the floor as she moved through the hall, looking back over her shoulder.

  “I wish I could’ve done more for Kim. I wish I’d still been around to stop all this before it happened.”

  “You’re doing your part now, and that’s enough. Don’t stop caring like the rest of the cops.”

  Tera nodded, giving a pass to the slight about her peers, and stepped out the door. It was getting dark out and the air was sweltering. Jeans and a tank top weren’t ideal for police work, but neither was feeling like she was walking on the surface of the sun.

  When she got in her car, she needed a minute to get control of herself before calling Brady. It felt like she was about to bubble over and wasn’t entirely sure she’d checked the emotions that had her clenching the steering wheel and furrowing her brow when she tapped his number. The abuse of a parent was one thing g
irls like them couldn’t manage to escape from.

  “Hey, Brady, are you listening?”

  “Of course,” he said over the line.

  “Robert Parkinson was pressuring Kim to help him sell drugs to cover some gambling debts. Her mother hadn’t known that it was what led to her death, but that was the piece we needed. I’ve also got his home address and a clear window tonight to perform a search,” she said.

  Tera listened to a sigh of relief come through the phone’s speaker.

  “Incredible. Great work. I’ll get it cleared as quickly as I can and plan to join you later. Let me know if anything else pops up. Let’s close this case for real this time.”

  She nodded even though he couldn’t see and ended the call, turning the key to start the car with an angry twist of the wrist. She’d crawled through broken glass for this case, been lied to, deceived, betrayed, but she’d made it this far and the end was so close. It felt like she was crawling out of the water again, ready to do anything. And she would not be stopped.

  Red lights stopped her at every intersection on the way to Calumet Ave, and by the time she got there the night had fully set in and the streetlights reflected on the faces passing along the unusually busy sidewalk. Before she would’ve been hesitant to venture out into all that considering what she had to do, but not now.

  As far as she was concerned, they could all come watch her break down the door to Robert’s apartment. She did walk briskly with her fingers wrapped tight around the Luger in plain sight, probably the only thing that would prevent her from coming out to find that the tires on her car had been stolen.

  This wouldn’t take long anyway, and she was itching to find a way to put her raging indignation to rest.

  Robert Parkinson lived on the fourth floor of a five-story walkup of gray brick, better looking than some of the other buildings and suggesting that he was very content taking from his daughter and living relatively comfortably while she lived in near-squalor. Climbing the steps gave her a lot of time to imagine the things she might find.

  A part of her wanted him to be inside when she got there. The city had too many places for a killer to vanish into, and letting him get away to live like a rat on the edge wasn’t going to work for her. He’d answer for his crimes.

  The plain door labeled 4D was around the corner from the top of the stairs. She glanced at the other doors, wondering if she was being watched or if the residents were out on the streets like seemingly everyone else.

  “This is the police! Open up!” she called after spending a moment with her ear to the door to get a sense of if anyone was inside. Everything seemed to check out with what Lucinda had said. Now that she’d given the obligatory warning, it was time to move in.

  The door had the usual door knob with the lock inside, and she gave it a jiggle to determine that it was locked. As much as she would’ve liked to kick the door down, growing up on the streets was good for a thing or two, and this was one of them. She slipped her license from the pants pocket and slipped it into the tiny crevasse between the door and the frame. Sliding it through, the door popped open.

  It was dark inside the room, which had a single shaded window. Tera hit the light before closing the door behind herself. The place had a smokey smell to it that was a bit sickening, but she didn’t waste any time getting to work. She immediately saw some painting supplies, several pairs of overalls hanging from hooks in the walls, and a couple of pairs of work boots in a jumble by the door. But it didn’t take her long to find things that were more interesting to her.

  A picture on the nightstand by the twin-sized bed of Robert and Kim was immediately aggravating. Even after killing her he didn’t have the shame to put it away. The frame was covered in dust as well. Under the bed was a lockbox about a foot wide and half a foot tall. Tera glared at it, wondering if all the secrets she came for would be hidden in there.

  The room wasn’t that big but had a lot in it, same with the adjoining bathroom and closet. Noticeably, there wasn’t a computer of any kind around, but Tera found a landline phone on the table that displayed a number of voicemail messages.

  Although she wanted to remain quiet, she couldn’t help but hit the button on the phone to play the recordings. Every voice she heard got her hopes up, but none of them proved to be incriminating. One guy needed Robert to cover for him at work. Another wanted to play pool on the weekend. His electricity bill was overdue and they were threatening to shut it off if he didn’t pay.

  Tera started going through the drawers that were part of a bookcase that didn’t have any books, and she wondered if like his daughter this was where he’d keep anything illicit. But she only found some old CD’s. It wasn’t until she began digging through the kitchen as a last resort that her luck began to improve. Underneath the sink was a small cardboard box, and even though it was basically empty she noticed powdery residue that gave away that this was where he stored the narcotics he was selling.

  It looked like he was out of stock at the moment or had taken whatever he had with him. Tera snapped a couple of pictures of the remnants with her phone and sent them over to Brady. More digging around in the kitchen area only gave her a cut on her finger as she grazed the rusty edge of a drawer.

  Irritated at the sting and the sight of her blood, she sucked her finger and turned around to see if there was anything else. That may have been the closest she’d come to discovering any drugs, but signs of a firearm would seal the deal. She lifted up the pillow and then the mattress, finding nothing. A backpack in the corner didn’t contain anything of note.

  Running out of plausible options, she started digging in the trash for boxes, casings, paper inserts, or anything else that might suggest that there was material related to guns around. It hit Tera as the garbage she’d scattered on the floor rose up to her ankles that he may have stolen or been given the gun he’d used. At this point it was hard to rule out that if he had a gun it was probably on him.

  She glanced at the door, wondering if she’d been here too long already and needed to go. The evening was stretching on, and when Lucinda said Robert would be back late she had no idea how late that really was. But even though she’d found just enough under the sink to corroborate the story, Tera had a sneaking suspicion that there had to be more here. If Robert was really slipping into a life of crime as a result of debilitating debts, she would’ve thought there’d be more around related to it.

  Going back to the closet, she cleared out shelves of clothes, finding nothing, and then kneeled down to the space at the bottom, which looked like it was for junk too large for the garbage bin. There was a keyboard with a cut cord. An old toaster. A bowling ball and shoes. She cleared the bulky items away until she found a screen buried in the back. It wasn’t until she began to lift it out that she recognized it.

  These were the monitors found in police squad cars. As she turned it over and ran her finger along the broken stem that would normally be mounted to the dashboard, she realized that this was the monitor that had been in her squad car.

  In a sudden moment of panic, she dropped the monitor, which clattered against the floor. In the light of the main room, flecks of dried blood were visible here and there on it. Taking a stilted breath, she reached for her phone.

  “Brady?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m at the apartment, and I just found something that is freaking me out a little,” she said.

  “What is it? You found more coke?” he asked. Tera ran her hand through her hair and went to the window, peeking down to try to see the street. She didn’t like making any more noise than she needed to. Now that she knew this, the only thing she wanted was to get out, but talking her way down the stairs wasn’t going to work.

  “There were traces under the sink, enough to tie him to it, but that’s not even what I’m talking about. I found the dash monitor that had been taken from the squad car after it was broken into the night Johnny Rittigen was killed. I think…‌I think he went up to the vehicle loo
king for me because I was the one most likely to put together that he’d been the one who killed Kim.”

  “And he killed Johnny, possibly before even realizing it wasn’t you, and then he snapped off the monitor and took it to disguise the intent of the attack. Maybe he thought he could sell it,” Brady added.

  Tera looked down at the black screen that Johnny had used to watch Netflix instead of keeping an eye out for killers sneaking up behind the vehicle. It was chilling, but she was even more disturbed that Robert had tried to kill her only a short time before seeing her at Kim’s funeral and acting all nice. The lies and deceptions had gone even deeper than she had known.

  “Possibly, but I wonder if it’s not here as some sort of trophy. The way it’s mangled in the back, I’m not sure how anybody could seriously think this would have much value to it. Wait, what was that?”

  “What was what?” Brady asked, but Tera moved the phone away from her ear to better hear. She wasn’t exactly sure she’d heard anything, but something told her that she was no longer safe.

  “Tera,” Brady said, and she hastily ended the call before anymore noise could come out of her phone. A moment later she could hear footsteps out in the hall. Perhaps the faintest creak of the stairs had alerted her someone was coming. The footsteps came closer to the room she was in, and she didn’t for a second think it could be anyone other than the resident.

  Slipping her phone away, she drew her gun and held it carefully as she watched the door. The only question was if Robert Parkinson would have his on him and whether he’d notice that she’d turned the lights on. Tera had to assume he would notice and know that he’d been found out.

  Raising the gun in her hands, she stood straight on in front of the door. The footsteps came closer, and she heard the jostling of the key in the lock. A pause followed that made her think he may have just noticed that something was off. She felt like she could faintly hear his breathing on the other side of the door. In her mind, she could already see him.