Grave Mistakes: A Deadly Vigilante Crime Thriller (Affair with Murder Book 3)

by Brian Spangler

  I stepped around the body, taking to the other side so that Walter and I were facing one another.

  “I kept the evidence as is, wanted you to see it,” he told me as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves, snapping the rubbery lips against his wrists.

  “Help me out Walter,” I said and reluctantly leaned closer. “What am I looking at?”

  “They’re right there,” he answered with a light guffaw. I frowned, uninterested in the humor. His smile waned as he turned the homeless man’s hand to face the ceiling. The joints in the dead man’s wrist hollered in protest like the refrigerator door. “You got an evidence bag on you?”

  I showed Walter the plastic evidence bag—the space left to write in the chain of custody still blank. I’d learned early in my career to carry a few spare bags whenever investigating a case.

  Walter pried apart the dead man’s fist, pulling away the fingers and filling the room with another set of grating pops. In the homeless man’s palm I saw two buttons. The sight of them was almost bizarre, and I had to blink away the shock, believing my mind must be playing tricks on me. I recognized the buttons. My heart stopped then, the evidence bag slipping from my fingers. An image rushed into my mind like a kick in the head. I saw Amy standing in our kitchen, telling me she’d fallen. This had to be a mistake.

  “Sorry,” I managed to mutter and picked up the bag, pitching it open like a hungry mouth. He plunked the blouse’s buttons into the evidence bag like ice cubes into a stiff drink and then closed the dead man’s hand for a final time.

  “Your evidence,” he said with a smile, handing over the buttons. “Doubt there are many homeless wearing a woman’s blouse. I betcha didn’t expect to see that. Huh?”

  “Nope,” I answered, sealing the bag, my voice gravelly. “I suppose that does change things a bit.”

  “Well, that’s for you to figure out. I just write the reports and send them over.”

  “Thanks, Walter.”

  The picture of what had happened was suddenly becoming very clear—the images of the library and the alley piecing together. I rushed out of the morgue, escaping the cold and the smell, the truth about Amy’s accident chasing me like a predator. I heaved my breakfast, throwing it up onto a corner wall. Walter followed me out of the room and put his hand on my back.

  “Just need a minute, please,” I told him, hoping he’d leave and take the smell of the dead with him. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Everyone picks this corner,” he said. “Always this corner. I’ll get it cleaned up. And if I find anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  I heaved again, giving him a cue to leave. He mumbled a few more words, but my ears were thumping with the sound of my heartbeat.

  Knowing my wife had been there, knowing that she’d nearly sawed the man’s head clear off his neck, knowing that she’d lied about it all... the truth tore me up.

  I spent the next five minutes trying to catch my breath and clear the sting from my eyes. I also spent the time justifying what Amy had done. Maybe what she did and the way she did it wasn’t all that bad. Was it?

  I had come up with a dirt-simple plan. I had the buttons from her blouse in my breast pocket. The evidence that could convict her was close to my heart, and it was there they’d stay. The normal procedure to follow is for us to submit all evidence to our forensics lab for analysis. There’s a lot that we can’t see, but those sciency nuts with their scopes and million-dollar pieces of equipment, they see everything.

  When I got back to my desk, I swiped errantly at the sweat on my forehead and forced myself to breathe. And for the first time in what might have been minutes, I did breathe. I almost broke down and cried too, but held it in long enough to sit before my legs gave out. I also did something I thought would end the homeless man’s case forever, closing it like Walter had closed the dead man’s clenched hand. I stuffed the bag with the bloody buttons deep into my desk drawer, where nobody would ever go looking.

  Had this been the murder of someone else, questions about the recovered evidence would have come up. But this was a homeless man, and nobody was going to miss him. Charlie, my boss and the Captain of our small police department, had stopped by my desk a week or so later to ask about the evidence. By then, the coroner’s report had been written, read and processed along with the ton of other daily reports that flow through our small police station. I remembered feeling nervous, tapping my foot beneath my desk while he leafed through a collection of ratty case files. But I also remembered feeling confident about handling any inconvenient questions.

  “That homeless man... evidence is still not showing up at the lab. You gonna take care of that?” he’d asked, slipping his finger into a folder. I gave him a quizzical look, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Dead guy in the alley. You know, the one that effed up our dinner plans with the wives at Romeo’s.”

  And it had. Amy and I were supposed to have a dinner date that evening. But across from the restaurant there was the dark alley, and in that alley were the remains of what Amy had left behind.

  “I’m on it,” I told him.

  He flipped open another case folder and rocked back and forth the way he sometimes did when waiting impatiently.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nah. Suppose not. It’s not like there’s a rush on that one anyway,” he answered, depositing three new case files onto my desk. “Get on these too, when you can. And tell your missus we’ll reschedule that dinner.”

  “Got it,” I answered—a sigh of relief leaving my lips unnoticed. But the buttons remained where they were, and the homeless man’s body was later cremated and disposed of. Nobody came forward. Nobody called the station. Nobody asked about the homeless man. It was as I expected: nobody would miss him.

  * * *

  After a few weeks, the homeless man, his murder, and any evidence were all but forgotten. Amy’s wounds healed, scabbing over and then flaking until her skin turned a bright pink. Her scars eventually faded and disappeared like a memory, but I didn’t forget. I couldn’t forget.

  I realized I’d made myself an accomplice—a partner in her crime. I’d broken the law. Scratch that, I’m breaking the law with each day that I continue to sit on the evidence. Obstruction of Justice means an immediate release from my position. It also means I’d lose my badge and gun. My career would be ruined. If convicted, I could go to prison. And prison is no place for a cop.

  I protected Amy by hiding the truth, but I should have pushed the issue, should have pushed her to do the right thing. I should have shown her the buttons, the evidence she’d left behind. I could have convinced her to come forward and explain how she’d been attacked and had been forced to defend herself. She’d say it was her life or the homeless man’s—nobody would have questioned her. If I’d done what I was supposed to, she would have walked away from it all, free.

  I’d never be able to explain why I held onto the evidence, though. A detective at my level just doesn’t forget about evidence sitting in his desk drawer. How would Charlie and the district attorney react? I think they’d see through any of my excuses. At best, my career would be over, and I’d face a light prison sentence. But if the DA wanted to, he could put me away for a long time, using me to make an example of some zero-tolerance corruption bullshit.

  So, what did I do? Nothing. That’s a sour pill to swallow when considering that I’m now partly responsible for another man’s death. And I’m not at all sure I can cover up Amy’s second murder. I’m not at all sure I should. It crushed my soul just thinking she could have done this again, but like I said, we took vows, and somewhere in those many word-filled commitments, I remember saying: In sickness and in health.

  * * *

  By the time of Amy’s second murder, I was no longer working homicide. A gunshot wound ended my days on the streets. I could still contribute—even participate in a few investigations (mostly older, unsolved, cases)—but I no longer had the legs for the type of door-to-door work needed to
cover the homicide beat.

  Jenna White was the detective in charge now, overseeing many of the new cases. She often jumped between missing persons and homicide, since one case led to the other frequently enough. Nobody in the department had the experience she had—given the fact that she’d lost her daughter to a kidnapping a few years earlier. Maybe it was the past that gave her a hard look and an even harder demeanor, but she saw through everything and connected clues that were invisible to the rest of us. Without a doubt, she was one of the better detectives and not just hanging around to collect a paycheck.

  “Morning,” Jenna said, passing my desk, the smell of fresh coffee following her. With her summer-red hair, she wore a striped top that matched her gray slacks and as usual, she kept just enough buttons open to keep things interesting. The tune she was humming told me that today was going to be one of her better days.

  She’d confided in me once about her days—and how the bad settled in on most while the good occasionally made a brief appearance. Today would be a good day because the past would forget about her, or she’d forget about the past. I wasn’t sure how she’d worded it, but the net result was the same: today was a better day. She sat down at the desk next to me, the song she was humming slipped softly from her lips. “Good day, Sunshine . . .”

  “Beatles?” I asked, recognizing the melody. She smiled, and a light flush came to her face. I smiled back, glad to see her more cheerful. She was an excellent detective, but that’s all she was, having given up on most everything else in her life. “Good song, haven’t heard it in years.”

  “Beatles marathon on the radio,” she admitted, turning to face her computer. The top of her shirt separated just enough to catch my attention. I couldn’t help but notice, but I turned back to my screen and to my thoughts about the man Amy murdered. When Jenna’s screen came alive—a glow showing on her face—I peered over for a glance. As suspected, she was working the case that had me up nights: the murder of Garret Williams. Like the buttons and the homeless man, it was the evidence found on his body that offered the biggest clue—Amy’s ring—I’d only seen it one time before, but I recognized it immediately. And once I recognized the it, I knew that my one chance at saving Amy, saving us, would be to steal the ring before Jenna reviewed the collected evidence. I just had to figure out how to get it without being caught.

  To make matters worse, Garret Williams was one of us, a police detective. My wife had murdered a cop. That’s capital murder, meaning a lot of eyes on the case and eligibility for the death penalty. Complicating the case, Garret wasn’t just some random cop; we had worked together. He’d even been to my house—he had met my kids and had met Amy. She didn’t just kill some random stranger this time. But why was Amy even with him? What was the connection? I closed my eyes, cringing, my gut chewing on a million terrible thoughts.

  Amy’s ring—a gaudy, ugly and nearly indescribable thing—was something I’d come upon quite by accident. She’d said it was a gift, a friendship ring, and that I shouldn’t make fun of it. We were struggling back then, having just lost a baby, and when I saw her expression, I could see how important the ring was to her, and I had the crazy idea of buying a pendant or earrings to match. Without Amy knowing, I’d snapped a picture of her ring and started my search in hopes of finding any jewelry to match. The station was the safest place to do a discreet online search for similar jewelry, and that’s when Jenna got a memorable glimpse of Amy’s ring. Standing behind me, staring at my screen and shaking her head, Jenna quickly agreed; it was one of the ugliest rings she’d ever seen.

  “Sentiment does have a way of making things beautiful,” she’d said, placing her hand on my shoulder. “But ugly is ugly, and I doubt you’ll find anything to pretty-up that much ugly.”

  “Funny,” I’d replied in a warning tone. “Don’t you have some cases to catch up on?”

  It was the smallest of exchanges, the kind that fills our days—often spoken in passing and easily forgotten. But like I said, Jenna was an excellent detective, and that meant she was dangerous, too. I knew once the ring showed up in the evidence, she’d know who it was that killed Garret Williams.

  * * *

  “Steve, you okay?” Jenna asked, noticing my hands at work kneading my thigh. “You’re going at it kinda hard.”

  I shook my head, saying nothing and rapped my leg impatiently like an animal chewing on a dead limb. Since the shooting, I’d lost most of the feeling and mobility there. While the doctors made no promises of what might or might not return, I’d also made no plans of letting my hopes up. I decided this would be the best it was going to get and that I needed to live with the handicap. Smacking and picking at the tender muscles was a habit I’d formed, stirring a wave of pins and needles and ridding any momentary numbness. And, like a smoker, I’d also found the habit helped me to think.

  “Good days... and bad days,” I said, hoping she’d pick up on the meaning. “Ya know?”

  “I do,” she answered plainly, but her eyes showed concern. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Jenna turned her focus to her screen and clicked through the reports on the Williams case, selecting the coroner’s folder and a collection of files. I recognized the summary and scene reports as well as the autopsy, but I couldn’t be sure when the ring had been collected or if any pictures had been taken yet. I leaned in some more, trying not to get noticed. In the case of the homeless man and the buttons, I’d swiped the buttons before forensics received them. With no photographs and no analysis, there’d been no evidence. The same could be true for Amy’s ring.

  I mirrored Jenna’s moves, clicking to open the same reports. Our computer screens became a carbon copies of one another. I searched for any pictures across the different folders, scanning the file names, recognizing our station’s template files and the occasional spreadsheets for crime-scene inventory. But I found no image files. I’d leaned too far, putting an unfamiliar strain on my leg. I tried ignoring the needling sensation, but sweat beaded on the back of my neck—a response to the lightning turning my skin into electricity. I shook but held my place a moment longer.

  A quick click and preview of the spreadsheets, and I saw no line items describing Amy’s ring. I dropped forward, perspiration running down my nose, my lungs cramped for air. I had a chance of getting the ring before any processing could be done. I knew the guard who manned the evidence cage, Jimmy Blume—a drinking buddy from our academy days. He owed me for helping him pass, but did he owe me enough to let me into the cage? It was near noon, and I knew he didn’t inventory new cases until after lunch. A new flash of lightning rode up my leg and into my crotch, causing me to double over and groan.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Jenna asked. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I’d had worse, but this was bad. She stood to come over, and I jabbed my hand out, crashing down on my mouse to close the windows on my screen before she noticed the Williams case files. “Steve, you’re really sweating. Should I get some help?”

  I shook my head, strangely thankful to have an excuse for getting up. “I think I’ll have to walk off the spasms,” I told her, swiping at my brow. “Will do me some good to move.”

  “Okay. If it’s not too much when you get back, would you mind helping me go over some of this?” she asked, nudging her chin toward her screen. “Not sure I’m seeing everything.”

  “Sure thing,” I said and pushed up on my desk, struggling to stand. The excuse was just an excuse to go to the evidence locker, but the pain was real.

  * * *

  Jimmy Blume was a monster of a man. I’d often thought he might be too big to be a cop. Maybe standing guard at the evidence locker was the perfect job for him. Big, and not necessarily bright, he had an equally big heart, making it easy for me to want to help him at the Academy. While most in our class had moved on to become detectives, Jimmy floundered. By now, I think he’d worked every beat there was to work wearing the uniform. And, as it turned out, Jimmy’s assignment at the station as a gua
rd over the evidence locker might just be one of the luckiest happenstance moments in my life.

  “Mr. Blume!” I yelled, startling him from his usual slumped posture. He dropped a crinkled newspaper and stood at attention. I shook my hands and limped out of the narrow hallway’s dim light, adding, “Just me, Jimmy. Relax.”

  “Scared me is all,” he answered sheepishly. “Gets too quiet down here.”

  “Any good news in the world?” I asked, pulling the newspaper around. The headline was a few days old, and the corners of the paper had already begun to fray. Curious, I lifted the front page to find a Marvel comic book beneath. I gave Jimmy a stern look. He bit his lip and furrowed his brow. “I think I like what you’re reading better than what’s in the newspaper.”

  “Not gonna say nothing?”

  “What you read in the cage, stays in the cage,” I answered, knocking my hand against the metal. I turned the comic book back around to face him.

  “Thank you, Steve,” he gave me one of his simpler smiles. “I get bored sometimes, and I like the pictures.”

  I nodded my understanding and leaned onto my good leg, trying not to wince. Lifting up onto the plank of wood that separated us, I scanned the room behind Jimmy. The evidence locker was more like a room than a cage, but I guess the name was a fit across all police stations. The door separating the outside from the inside was the Dutch door variety, divided in the middle with the top open and the bottom made to accommodate a small table for receiving and signing out the evidence. A small metal fence covered the open areas and gave us an excuse to call it the cage. Inside, I saw a well-worn chair where Jimmy sat, the seat sagging under a flattened cushion. The rest of the room was filled with rows and rows of shelves stretching front to back and rising from the floor to the ceiling. There was a step stool in the corner—the handle caked in a thin layer of dust. Jimmy could touch the ceiling easily enough, so he’d likely never had a need for the stool.