Karma

by RJ Blain

  I couldn’t tell if I had offended her, shocked her, or both, but she backed off and headed in the direction I had pointed. Biting my lip so I wouldn’t smile, I resumed my examination of all the pillars and sculptures, making a point of taking a picture of everything.

  Halfway through, I spotted something odd about one of the pillars, which was partially masked by the boughs of a pine planted nearby. I stepped closer, pretending to look at the abstract pattern painted on the bridge support. Bullets made a distinctive mark when they struck concrete, and the damage was recent enough the powder from the impact hadn’t washed away. The design of the art did a good job hiding the marks, and it wasn’t until I got close I realized one of the bullets was still lodged in its hole. I crouched and examined the entry points, which were around three feet from the ground.

  The paint, which was a mix of browns, reds, and yellows, had masked the presence of blood spatter. I snapped photographs while the sinking feeling of dread cramped my stomach. I scooted closer to the pine, searching for the second bullet.

  The base of the pillar, which was concrete leading up to the grass of the yard, was clean—too clean, likely to remove the blood. Someone had scattered some dirt from around the pine in an effort to hide that the section no longer matched the rest of the concrete beneath the bridge.

  I found the second bullet half buried in dirt near the pine, and from the looks of it, it had been caught up in the effort to hide the clean spots of concrete. I took a photograph of it, rose to my feet, and backed away a few steps so I could take another picture of the pillar, the hole, and the bullet in the same frame.

  Then I called Daniels, clutching my phone so my hand wouldn’t shake.

  “What do you have for me?”

  “Two fresh bullet holes and blood spatter, one round still in the pillar, a second on the ground nearby. Looks like someone cleaned the concrete near the pillar and used nearby dirt to hide their activities. Location is the Haynes Street pillar park, which is beneath the Route 56 overpass. I can’t tell you the age, but there is still concrete powder around the holes.”

  “Have you touched anything?”

  “Of course I haven’t touched anything, I’m not geared for a crime scene investigation. I don’t even have gloves. I have taken pictures, and that’s it.” I focused on my breathing. “Bullet holes are about three feet from the ground. Looks like 9mm rounds.”

  “Quantity of blood?”

  “If the attempted cleanup is any indication, substantial. Give me a sec.” I got closer to the concrete, narrowing my eyes as I worked to distinguish blood from paint. “There’s spatter on the art here. I’m going to guess the vic was close to the pillar when shot.”

  “Fatal amount?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Forensics might be able to figure it out. Without knowing the vic’s age and body size, I can’t really answer your question. Have there been any reports of anyone else missing in the area?”

  Daniels was silent for a long time, and I chewed on my lip.

  Waiting was always, always the hardest part, even though I knew the possibility of someone else going missing in the same town in such a short period of time was low at best.

  “Not that I know of,” he finally replied.

  “Fuck,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Any idea how long ago?”

  “When was the last time it rained here?”

  I heard the distinct sound of typing on the other end of the line. “The day before Jacob’s disappearance.”

  “I really doubt it has rained since these bullet holes were made. The bullet on the ground looks like it was caught up in the sweeping, and the coverage is thin enough any decent rainfall probably would have washed it away.”

  “Have you completed your walkthrough of the area?”

  “No, sir. Not yet. I called you right after I found the holes and photographed the scene.”

  “Keep me in the loop. Call me when you’re ready for me to bring in the local police.” Daniels hung up.

  I sat back on my heels and stared at the holes. Nothing added up. If the men behind the Greenwich case had kidnapped Jacob Henry, why hadn’t there been a ransom request? The evidence of Henry’s connection to Annabelle’s father was a strong indication Henry knew—or had—something the perps wanted. But, if that was the case, why was there blood spatter in a place elementary school kids hung out?

  Who had been shot? Why?

  I didn’t want to believe the victim had been Jacob Henry, but I had a hard time denying the circumstantial evidence piling up. The holes were about the right height for chest or head shots against a ten year old boy. On an adult, the holes would be closer to an abdomen hit, which didn’t bode well for the victim, either.

  I checked the holes one more time to examine the angle of entry, hoping the shot had been taken from higher ground to eliminate the possibility of the victim being a child.

  My hopes were short lived, and with a heavy sigh, I stood, stepped away from the pillar, and resumed my walk around the park, making sure I took time to examine the rest of the art as thoroughly as I had the pillar with its two bullet holes and bloodstains.

  I found several blood spatters leading to a nearby street, where the trail went cold. Dialing Daniels’s number, I stared at the park, wondering where I’d begin unraveling the mess.

  “Find anything else?”

  “Blood spatters leading to a nearby street. Looks like they carried the body to here and left. No rubber marks, and I can’t see anything else of use. Send in the cops. Maybe they’ll notice something I missed.”

  “On it. Take pictures of your shoes and footprints and send them to me so they can be accounted for. If you think you’ve gotten any evidence on your shoes, bag them and leave them for forensics.”

  I considered where I had walked, but doubted they’d find anything of use on my shoes; others had already disturbed the park, too. “Roger. I doubt there’s anything on my shoes of use. Lots of people come here, so the site has been disturbed already. Do you want us to start doing the ground work?”

  “I’m going to toss this to a violent crimes task force and the local police. I’ll advise you on how to proceed.”

  “Roger.” I hung up, stuffed my phone in my pocket, and trudged my way back to Jake and the Corvette, cursing every step of the way.

  I stomped the dirt off my shoes when I reached the Corvette, aware of Jake glaring at me from his post leaning against the car.

  “You sent that nag up here on purpose, didn’t you?”

  “Can it, Jake. I found two bullet holes, blood spatter, and a trail to a road on the other side of the bridge.”

  Jake made a sound suspiciously similar to a growl. “Fuck.”

  “Daniels is kicking it to folks on the violent crimes task force and the local police. He said he’ll advise us how to proceed.” Closing my eyes, I sighed, shook my head to clear it, and thought through our options. “This is not how things are supposed to go.”

  “Get in the car,” Jake ordered, circling to the driver’s side.

  I cracked open my eyes, yanked open the passenger side door, and slid inside. “I took a lot of pictures. Bullet holes were approximately three feet from the ground, fairly level entry points from what I could tell. Found one bullet lodged in the hole, and the other was in the stirred up dirt. Happened since the last rain, and someone had taken the time to clean up the blood.”

  “What sort of idiot cleans up the blood on the ground but leaves the bullets behind?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I confessed. “I was stuck on trying to figure out how they did such a good job of cleaning blood off the concrete without anyone noticing. Or, you know, calling in the sounds of gunfire. There are houses around here.”

  “Probably happened at night when no one was around, then. There are a lot of older cars around here, so maybe people assumed it was an engine backfiring?” Grunting, Jake started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “Where to next
?”

  “Should I assume the vic was Jacob Henry, or hope it was someone else and the kid still might be around somewhere? That’s the question. If I assume the vic is Jacob, we’re stuck playing the waiting game. I don’t think Daniels intends to let either one of us get involved with a potential murder investigation.”

  “At least not this specific investigation. It’ll get kicked to those in charge of the Greenwich case, probably. Sorry, Karma.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “What I want to know is why the CARD team didn’t find that. What the fuck are they doing? Didn’t they ask any questions at all? Didn’t they check anything out at all? Fuck. Anyone from the violent crimes division would’ve found those bullet holes. They’re supposed to be better than this. It wasn’t hard for you to find where the local kids hang out, was it? Why didn’t the cops scope the place out?” Merging onto the highway, Jake flexed his hands against the wheel. I kept quiet, staring out the window.

  “Those are some questions I want to ask Daniels. You have any ideas?”

  “While the cops check out the crime scene, we should check out potential dump sites. Let’s hold off on talking to Daniels until we’ve done our search.” Jake hesitated. “I’m surprised he hasn’t pulled us off the case yet. Your find changes everything.”

  “Give me a few,” I requested.

  As always, Jake nodded and settled in to wait for me.

  I needed five or ten minutes to think, focus, and make a plan. In our years together, we had set up a rhythm. While I thought about the situation, Jake handled the groundwork. If Jake didn’t have anything to do, he quietly waited for me to get my shit together.

  That period of time I needed to sit back and reflect was both a weakness and a strength. His patience was part of why I liked working with Jake. He didn’t question the time I took to think things over before dedicating to a plan. I liked reviewing the facts for a few minutes first.

  It was part of how I’d gotten a reputation for being calm and collected. It wasn’t because I was actually calm or collected, but rather because I needed the time to think, and I did my best thinking when I took a step back, calmed myself, and stayed quiet.

  Once it became a habit, it stayed a habit. Jake could handle the initial few minutes, getting us headed in the right direction.

  Jake cleared his throat.

  “What?”

  “It’s not much, but I want to check out that scenic overlook I tailed you to. I was a bit distracted when I picked you up yesterday. Think someone could toss a body over without anyone noticing it for a while?”

  I grimaced at the reminder of the gorge. “Easily. Lots of trees and rocks down there. It’s at the top of my list of potential dump sites in the area.”

  “Let’s start there. If we don’t find anything, we’ll regroup and decide what to do next. That should give you a chance to think about other potential sites.”

  I really hoped we wouldn’t find anything; since joining CARD, our failures had far outnumbered our successes.

  Jake reached over and gave my knee a pat. “We win some, we lose some, Karma. If we lose this one, we’ll do better on the next one, okay? Don’t write the kid off yet. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Like what?” I demanded.

  “I’m particularly fond of this one: an FBI agent freshly trained for child rescue gets kidnapped with an infant in a freak coincidence. Not only does she survive to talk about it, she rescues the baby. Both agent and infant emerge from the incident relatively unscathed. Stranger things have happened, and until we find a body, I’m not going to give up. I didn’t give up on you even though everyone else had. I don’t give a shit about the team’s performance until this point. You and me. Here and now. That’s how we used to operate, and that’s how we’ll operate now. If we lose, what do we do?”

  “We win next time,” I dutifully replied.

  “Damn fucking straight, Mrs. Thomas. We win next time. Now, let’s get to the overlook and do our jobs.”

  “But, Jake—”

  “No buts.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Didn’t I just say no buts?”

  “Goddamnit, Jake, you know I’m afraid of heights!”

  “Oh for… how bad can it be?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “How bad can it be?” I mocked, hands on my hips, ten feet above Jake, who was lying on his back. Without my partner’s help, I doubted I’d ever make it to the bottom of the gorge, but it beat falling into a mud bath likely infested with woman-eating slugs.

  The Conemaugh Gap was truly one of my worst nightmares. Why hadn’t I said no? Why had I let him coax me over a mile from the scenic overlook to take some death trap of a goat path leading down the slope?

  Why had the trail ended in a nightmare of jagged, broken stones designed to send us falling to our deaths?

  The gorge had already claimed Jake, and I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  Crying was starting to sound better and better.

  “I’m not dead, Karma. Actually, it was a pretty soft landing. You can just jump down if you don’t mind getting a little dirty. Nice, soft mud. Come on, it’s fun. I’ll even catch you.”

  “I hate you,” I snapped at him. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. I hate you.”

  “Come on, darling. Don’t be like that on our honeymoon.”

  “Don’t you even darling me, Jake Thomas. And don’t you honeymoon me, either. You just want to cash out my life insurance policy, don’t you? That must be it. You lured me down here to kill me. It’s how killers operate. They lure their victims to a secondary location. You picked this as the dumping site for my body, didn’t you?”

  “You’re kidding, right? I lost my footing and landed in the mud. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Tears burned in my eyes, and I stared up and up and up at the slope I had somehow managed to crawl down without dying. How had I come that far? There was no way I was getting back up without divine intervention. “You’re going to leave me here to die, aren’t you?”

  Jake grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at me. It hit the rocks at my feet. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve lured me to my death.”

  “Now you’re just overreacting.”

  “So what? You lied to me, Jake. You said everything would be just fine. You fell. Everything’s not just fine.”

  “I’m fine, Karma. Do I look dead to you?”

  “You’re lying on your back in the mud!” I shrieked.

  “I’m moving. I just threw mud at you. I can throw more at you. Damn, woman. You’re making a mountain out of an ant hill.” Jake lurched upright, and the mud sucked at him and his clothes. He shook his arms and hands, sending mud and water spraying everywhere. “I’m no longer lying in the mud. Are you satisfied?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t get down.” More accurately, I refused to budge from the safety of the solid rock. Determined to stay safely in place, I clung to one of the boulders, which was probably the only thing keeping me from falling the rest of the way into the gorge.

  “Jesus Christ, Karma. It’s ten feet. You have one big rock to slide your way to before you can walk the rest of the way down.” Jake approached, sighed, and lifted his arms. “Come on, then. I’ll lower you down.”

  “No way. I’ll fall.”

  “Just because I tripped and ended up in the mud doesn’t mean you’re going to fall. If you fall, you’ll land on me. I’ll protect you, okay?”

  I shook my head. When I refused to budge, Jake sighed again and climbed up the rocks to join me. “All right, all right. Look, I’m right here. Only a little way left to go.”

  “No.”

  Jake huffed, grabbed me by the waist, and pulled me away from the rocks. Struggling didn’t get me far. The man had muscles like steel. Tossing me over his shoulder, Jake took two steps and jumped.

  Mud splashed up, and he
went down to his knees without dropping me. I clutched at his back, shaking as I stared at the mud, struggling to believe Jake had jumped so far while carrying me. “Holy shit.”

  Laughing, Jake slid me down his chest until my feet ended up in the mud. My boots would never be the same, but I didn’t like them much anyway.

  Only an idiot wore heeled boots while descending into a gorge.

  “Breathe.”

  I obeyed, closing my eyes until my heart rate slowed.

  “Better?”

  Instead of speaking, I nodded.

  “Good. We’ve got work to do. The river’s right over there, which worries me. A body could easily end up in there if tossed from the top.” Jake wrapped his arm around my shoulder and guided me to the drier ground fringing the shore. “Mind holding my stuff? I don’t want to get mud all over it.”

  I frisked Jake, ridding his pockets of anything that could be damaged by water and mud. His wallet was ruined, and I liberated his damp cash before sliding it into his jacket pocket. His cell had survived unscathed, although there was an odd red icon blinking in the corner. “Hey, is your phone supposed to be doing this?”

  “What?” Jake wiped his hands on the front of his jacket to dry them before grabbing the device. “Fuck!” He unlocked his phone, browsed through his contacts, and made a phone call. “Jake Thomas reporting in,” he said when the call connected. “Uh, sorry. I fell.”

  “Into a gorge,” I snapped.

  “Not helping,” he told me.

  “It was your bright idea to go into a gorge, asshole.”

  “No, sir. Everything is fine.”

  Jake grimaced, and judging from his expression, someone was scolding him. After a few minutes, he sighed and slid the phone into his jacket pocket.

  “You deserved it for trying to kill us,” I informed him.

  “It was not that bad!”

  “It was. You fell.”

  “You didn’t fall, so everything is fine.”