by Jet MacLeod
“Well, I know what I am glad called. But, I was worried at first. I thought you were someone in Atlanta calling to tell me that she had been shot in the line of duty or something. I was beginning to panic until you told me who you were. Then, I knew that she had just done something awfully stupid,” Brianna replied.
“We didn’t know how to respond at first. But, I am glad that you thought to call us about it. I would have hated to hear from a police officer later that morning that something had happened to my Gracie Lynn,” Padrick added.
“I wouldn’t have let her leave my bar. I have a strict rule about drinking and driving at my club. Everyone but the DD has to turn in keys to get a drink. No keys, no drink, that’s my policy. Some people don’t like it, but that is how I run my club,” Reagan stated.
“Well, I am glad that someone is thinking about it. Maybe more clubs could learn from your ethics,” Brianna replied.
“I doubt so. Those whom I won’t serve go to their bars for business. They get more because I won’t serve them. I don’t blame them for that, but business is business. I just don’t want to see anyone hurt. Plus, most of business comes from regulars. That is why I was surprised to see Grace there that night,” Reagan explained.
“I bet that was fun trying to get her truck from her,” Padrick stated.
“Wasn’t me that did it. It was my bartender Leigh. She’s law at my bar. Don’t need a bouncer with her there. It is her way or the door. Most people don’t like to cross her for that reason. She doesn’t put up with much. That is why I like her there. She likes my rules, she likes the bar, I like her, so she stayed on when I bought the place,” Reagan told them.
“Whatever the circumstances, I am glad that someone stood up and helped my daughter. I am glad, too, that it was you, Reagan. I am not sure that I would have preferred it been a stranger. You I knew, you I trust, and you I thank for it,” Brianna responded.
“You don’t have to thank me. I just did what I thought I had to do. I didn’t know if you knew that she was staying there at the lake house. I knew you didn’t after I spoke to you that night. I have asked myself several times if I had done the right thing in telling you that she was there, but I couldn’t let her be that drunk and not know that she was home. I knew she was hurting. I didn’t know why, but I assumed that she would want her parents. I guess I was wrong. I am sorry for any problems that I may have caused between you,” Reagan explained.
“It was no problem that we didn’t already need to deal with,” Padrick answered.
“Besides, you had no idea what your phone call would have done. You were just trying to be friendly and neighborly. I am glad you did. I am not sure that Gracie was exactly too happy about it, in the beginning, but I am sure that she got over it, soon enough,” Brianna added.
“Yeah, well, I am not sure that I am happy about the way that happened,” Reagan said, absentmindedly.
“And, how was that?” Brianna asked.
“Oh, it was nothing. I really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about that. It is part of the reason that she left me here,” Reagan stated.
“And, why is that, again?” Padrick inquired.
Reagan shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to remember it. It reminded her to much of things that she couldn’t change.
“I don’t want to push, but I was just wondering why my daughter would drop you off here. I mean it is out of the way to get home for either one of you. Did something happen out at the cove? Is that why she left you here?” Padrick questioned.
“Yes, sir, that is exactly what happened,” Reagan answered, “That is why she left me here. She figured that I would be safer here with you, then out there at my house alone. I agreed with her. So, I am here.”
“Do you want to share with us what happened?” Padrick asked, concerned.
“No, not really,” Reagan answered.
“Leave it be, Paddy, some things people just don’t want to talk about with strangers,” Brianna stated.
“I know that. I was just trying to figure out why our daughter dropped her neighbor off at our house on her way to a call. It just doesn’t seem like something that Gracie would do without provocation to do so,” Padrick added.
“I understand that, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. So, let the child be,” Brianna replied, “Don’t worry about his prying, Reagan. You just let it go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Reagan said.
“If she doesn’t come back at a decent time, I want you to go up to her room and get some sleep. I don’t want you sleeping on the couch. You are a guest in this home and no one in this house sleeps on the couch unless it is in front of the TV. Do you understand me?” Brianna ordered.
“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Reagan replied.
“Good, now, if there is anything that you need, just let us know. Think of this as your house as well. We’ll show you where something is if you need to know,” Brianna added.
“Don’t be afraid to ask,” Padrick stated.
“I won’t be. Thank you,” Reagan responded.
“Don’t worry about it. That is what friends are for, child. If Gracie thinks that you will be safer here, then stay here. I wouldn’t put you out, but I will not be the one to let you stay on the couch when there is a good bed upstairs,” Brianna stated.
“I understand and thank you, again,” Reagan stated.
“Nothing to it, Reagan. You are like family now, at least to me. You have done so much for this family, between the business and Grace. We owe you as much,” Padrick replied.
“I don’t think so, but thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me, especially coming from you,” Reagan said, “I think that I am going to bed, soon. Thank you, again, for the hospitality.”
“You’re welcome, Reagan. Good night, dear. Sweet dreams,” Brianna told her.
‘Thank you, ma’am,” she replied.
“Good night, Reagan,” Padrick added, “If Grace comes in at a reasonable hour, I’ll send her up to wake you. If not, then I’ll be asleep. She’ll do whatever it is that she wants. She always has.”
“I understand that, believe me, I do,” Reagan answered as she found her way up the stairs and in Grace’s room.
Reagan smiled at the fact that Grace’s parents were so receptive to her. She wondered what Grace’s parents would think if they knew that she and Grace were starting to see each other romantically. She also wondered what they would say if they knew the real reason that Grace dropped her off there instead of her own home at Rainbow Cove. It was too much to think about at the moment, so she decided to go to bed and worry about it in the morning.
She was happy to have a nice quiet bed and a comfortable place to lay her head. Reagan was glad to be somewhat safe. She was tired of staying up all night in her own home worried about someone coming in and she was tired of staying at Grace’s place imposing on her goodness. She could only wonder what the motivation was behind Grace’s intentions.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“What you got, French?”
“Murder, rape, and hardly anything to go on. Why don’t you take a look and see what you can get? It looks like our old friend is back at it, again,” Grace’s partner suggested.
“Great. Witness?”
“This vic’s neighbor,” French said, flipping through his notebook. A Miss Angelica Davenport, found her two hours ago and called it in. That is all we got.”
“Anyone talked to her yet?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Good, you start with her and I’ll start processing outside.”
Grace watched French walk away as she walked around the side of the house. She glanced around at everything. She didn’t know what she was looking for but anything was better than nothing in this case. All the other crime scenes were clean except for the body. Grace was hoping that somehow, this time, the perp screwed up and left something behind.
“Detective, down here!”
“What is it?”
“Well, Lieutenant, it seems that that they may have been a second victim,” the CSU agent said.
“Second vic, huh? Name?”
“The vic’s or mine?”
“Yours,” Gracie said.
“Cormack, Cormack Hewlett, Sergeant First Class, CSU,” she answered.
“Well, we are going to get along famously, my dear, Cormack. Tell me what you got.”
“Here,” Cormack said, illuminating some rocks.
“Explain.”
“Blood lights up with this light because of the chemicals that I sprayed on the rocks. I thought something was amiss. I mean, I grew up on the water. You only get a depression in rocks like that when something heavy hits it or you fall. I decided to test it for blood and it lit up like a Christmas tree. The thing is that the blood flowed into the water. No body, no drag to the house, so I am assuming that the body was dumped in the lake somewhere. Figured I’d call in for divers to start searching the immediate area,” Cormack said.
“Good. Good job. I’ll call Danica. Someone got a radio?”
“Here,” another CSU said handing Grace a radio.
“Thanks,” Gracie said and then called Danica over the radio, “Batch 14, this is Wolf Seven Niner, over.”
The radio squelched, but there was no answer.
“Maybe she can’t read you out this far,” Cormack said.
“Doubt that, police have the best radios after the military. Do you know her phone number? She probably isn’t at her desk.”
“Yeah, Grace, here,” Cormack answered.
Grace dug out her cell phone. She flipped through her contacts and added the number. Once it was saved in her phone, she called it.
“Hello,” Danica said, answering the phone.
“Danica? Cap?”
“What’s up, kid? Find something.”
“Yeah, but we are going to need some help. I am going to need divers in the water in the cove where this house is located. Also, we should call DNR and see if they can seal off the area on the water for us. I think that we might have a body in the water. I want to find it,” Gracie said.
“No prob. I am on it. Keep digging and keep me informed. I’ll call you back with the name of the DNR liaison that will be heading that way for you. I’ll call in the divers and have them out there ASAP. Want anything else?” Danica asked.
“Yeah, can you get me a profiler? SLED or department, I don’t care, but I think we might have enough to get started with this one,” Grace said.
“Good idea. I’ll see what I can do. Keep it up,” Danica said and hung up.
“Get me whatever you can from that area, Cormack. I am going to take a look at the house and get with French about our witness. Call me if you get anything else, worth me looking at, okay?” Grace said, walking away and up to the house.
“No problem, detective.”
Grace walked into the back door of the house. She glanced around the room that was the kitchen. She looked in the sink and the fridge. She didn’t find anything unusual. She saw the wine glasses on the counter. There were two.
“So, there were two people here before the murder,” Grace said out loud.
Grace smiled. She was good. It was good to be back in the groove of crime solving. She decided that she needed to search the rest of the house.
It was a large house on the lake. It wasn’t a cookie-cutter house like some of them. This one had been part of Rainbow Cove before Rainbow Cove existed. It was a three bed room, four and half bath single story lake house. It had large windows on the back of the house overlooking the lake. The boat house was bricked in the same brick which meant that it was done around the time of the house’s construction or shortly thereafter. It was a nice place.
She decided to continue her search through the house. She wound her way down the hall past the main bedrooms and bathrooms. She made her way into the master bedroom.
“What you got?” Grace asked the CSU agent that was in the room.
“She definitely was not planning on being alone. She was primed for someone. The victim was planning on something with someone, but I doubt it was our perp.”
“Why you say that?”
“Candies, music, sexy undies. She was definitely planning on a hook up, but she didn’t get it. She probably thought that the perp was her lover coming to bed. All the lights were off, and with the time of death, that means our perp got to her sometime after her romantic dinner and before midnight. I would have to say that the time of death is somewhere between eight and eleven. The witness found her today at seven when she got home from work,” the agent said.
“Found her at seven, huh?”
“Yeah, told the first officer on the scene that the dogs were out in the yard.”
“Dogs in the yard, huh?”
“Sounds like an odd reason to check on your neighbor but that is what she said.”
“Hmm, I think I am going to go talk to French and see what he has on the sitch,” Gracie said.
Gracie walked back through the house and towards the front door. She could see French and the neighbor in the front yard talking. She took a quick look at the front door and it was still locked. All the police had been coming in through the back to maintain the scene.
Gracie looked around the living room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. She was a tidy yet chic woman. She looked back out the windows in the front and only saw one car in the driveway. It made Gracie want to check the garage. She made her way back into the kitchen and looked out the garage door to find another car parked there as well.
“Jackpot. Maybe we can ID the second body now, before they find it.”
Grace ran back through the house and back outside. She stopped on the deck. There were drag marks in a path way to the boat house. Grace looked at the condition of the grass and surveyed the yard. The path was fresh and hadn’t been made by the dogs.
“Cormack! Come here! Quick!”
Cormack turned and handed something to another agent. She gathered her CSU bag and ran up to Gracie. She tried to figure out what had Grace so intrigued.
“Talk to me, Goose,” Cormack said.
“Goose? Too much ‘Top Gun’ in your past, my friend. Look at this, Hewlett. Take a look at that pathway and tell me what you think,” Grace said.
“Well, O’Shea, it looks like drag marks. Possibly a back foot or a limped leg being dragged behind the perp. This was the movement of the perp towards the house. Good job, O’Shea, now, we have a route of attack,” Cormack said.
“Good, find out everything that you can from those drag marks. I want to know what kind of shoe he was wearing, possible weight, anything. I want to know whatever you can tell me from that. I want this guy, Cormack. I want him bad,” Grace said.
She walked passed Cormack and around the deck. She saw French and the witness Angelica Davenport. The woman was still visibly upset and Gracie wondered if she shouldn’t have talked to the witness herself.
“So what we got?” Grace asked.
“Give us a second, Mrs. Davenport,” French said.
“Yes, officer.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Davenport,” Grace said.
“Well, it seems that she noticed that the dogs were outside when she got home from work. She says that our vic never left the dogs out during the day unless she was outside with them. It seems that Ms. Davenport found it odd that the dogs were still outside and decided to check on the vic. She saw the Jeep in the drive way and then noticed the car in the garage. She came into the back yard and knocked on the back door. She noticed that it was unlocked. She announced herself as she walked through the house and then she found the victim. She screamed and then called the police,” Frenchy told her.
“Well, the dogs were out. That seems like an odd reason to be checking on your neighbors, but I guess Ms. Davenport knew the vic’s routine and could see that this was not part of it. If the dogs were outside, maybe our perp likes the vic. I’ll run it by the profile.”
“You got a theory?” Lt. David French asked.
“Yep, a wild one, but I want to run it past the profiler before I finish it all out. You see what else Ms. Davenport remembers. I am going to see what Cormack has for me. Then, I am going back to the station and adding this to the file. See you later, then,” Gracie said.
“I’ll catch up with you at the station, then,” David replied.
Gracie walked back around the house and looked at the scene before her. She tried to figure out what the perp was thinking while he was lying in wait. He had to have sat in the boat house waiting for something to happen. She could only guess that the person that was over messed up his plans. That is why this was a rape/murder and a messy one at that. Gracie studied the landscape and the yard. She looked at the lake outstretched before her.
Cormack was staring at Gracie looking at the landscape. She started to walk up towards Grace. She had finished her evaluation of the drag marks. Gracie was good, Cormack knew it, but the evidence told Cormack how good Gracie really was.
“You were right,” Cormack said, breaking Grace’s trance.
“About?”
“The tracks. They have to be from the killer,” Cormack said.
“So?”
“The killer was tall, probably about six feet tall around two hundred pounds. He was obviously injured in his right leg, upper thigh. It must be a big enough wound to make the perp drag it behind the left when he walks. It is a recent wound and it makes him clumsy in his walking. He is still trying to make it work. He hasn’t quite got the feel for it yet,” Cormack said.
“Interesting. So I am looking for a tall guy with average weight and an injured right leg. That isn’t very much to go on, but it is a start and more than I had yesterday. Good job. Keep it up and let me know if you find anything else, and I mean anything. I don’t care how small it is, I want this guy. If you think it will help, let me know about it. Got it?” Grace asked.
