Sole Witness

by Jenn Black

  “Cripes. I don’t want to hear this.” Lori turned back to the TV. “You’ll find someone new, Kimber. Someone better than both of them.”

  “Easy for you to say. You start someone new every season of the year.”

  The air thickened like molasses. Lori turned to stare at Kimberley in hurt and disbelief. Sure, many men lusted after her. But she stopped them with a well-practiced look. They only wanted her because they’d seen her in jewel-encrusted bikinis, smiling at them from the pages of glossy magazines.

  “I’m not a supermodel like you,” Kimber continued. “I couldn’t have a string of guys if I paid them.”

  Lori stood and crossed her arms. “Well, this time I came home to you. Lucky me.”

  Kimber shrugged and pointed at the TV. “Look. Now, there’s a hot cop.”

  Accepting Kimber’s subject change, Lori turned to the screen and froze. Davis Hamilton stood in a form-fitting suit, separated from a gaggle of reporters by a thin strip of yellow crime scene tape. Kimber was right. He looked good enough to eat.

  “Lori—you’re blushing. Do you know him?”

  Know him? That was one way to put it.

  She knew how he stuck the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he worked on his drawings. She knew how his body glistened with sweat when he finished one of his marathon running sessions. She knew how his eyes dilated and darkened when unable to hide his arousal.

  But did she know him? Not really. Not anymore.

  “Once. A long time ago.”

  “When’s a long time ago? I’ve known you for eleven years, and I’ve never met him. What’s his name?”

  Lori took a deep breath and shifted on the bed. “Davy.”

  “Ohhh. Davy. The one that took your virginity your freshman year and dumped you for the head cheerleader?”

  “Kimber, for Pete’s sake. Do you mind?”

  “Sorry! I didn’t know it was still a sore spot. He’s hot, Lori. I’d have let him do it to me, too. I still would. Look at him. Is he single?”

  Lori grit her teeth. “He married the cheerleader.”

  Kimberley flipped through the still-muted channels. “Is it a happy marriage?”

  “You’re not going to sleep with my ex-boyfriend. Find someone else.”

  “Fine, fine. If you love him so much, why don’t you get him back?”

  “I don’t love him.”

  “Whatever. A little possessive, I’d say, for someone who hasn’t boinked him in over a decade.”

  “Kimberley, I swear to you, I’m going to–”

  A crack of thunder interrupted Lori’s threat.

  “A storm! Mr. Giggles is outside,” cried Kimber. She motioned wildly.

  What, she was too depressed to fetch her own cat?

  With a sigh, Lori raced through the house to the sliding glass door. She shoved it the rest of the way open and sprinted into the back yard.

  “Mr. Giggles? Mr. Giggles? Come on, kitty.”

  A flash of white underneath her orange tree caught Lori’s attention and she lurched after him, snatching him into her arms. The first drop of rain plopped onto her nose. The sky opened up and sheets of rain drenched the yard.

  Another crack of thunder boomed in the clouds. A streak of lightning raced across the sky. Clutching Mr. Giggles to her chest, Lori ducked her head and ran inside, dropping the cat to the kitchen tile and sagging against the interior wall.

  “You didn’t shut the sliding door either.”

  Lori blinked through wet lashes until Kimberley came into focus. She reached out and slid the door shut without a word.

  Kimberley walked to the refrigerator and snatched a photo from the top. “Who’s this, Lori? Who’s this, and what are you doing?”

  It was Sara, of course. Sissy. The two of them, over a year and a half ago, on vacation in L.A. Sara’d been so jealous of Lori’s crazy career, full of exotic locale’s featuring Lori’s bread-and-butter: Beach shots.

  A humorless little laugh escaped Lori’s lips.

  What did Sara have to be jealous about? Third grade teachers were far more important than fashion models any day. Third grade teachers knew their multiplication tables. Lori couldn’t even leave tips without the calculator feature in her cell phone.

  Kimberley waved the photo in her face.

  “I can see. Thanks,” Lori muttered.

  Sara. The tail end of her summer vacation had dwindled and she was determined to do something wild. If Lori had only known…

  “How long has it been?” Kimberley insisted. “A year?”

  Yeah. Almost exactly one year since the sunny afternoon Sara had talked her into hang-gliding to get over her fear of heights. That plan had failed in more ways than one.

  “Put it away.” Lori folded her arms across her wet shirt.

  “Oh, I’ll put it away.” Kimberly slapped the photo back onto the refrigerator. “When will you? She’s dead, Lori. You have to start getting over it.”

  No. Lori’s muscles bunched in repressed anger. “First my dad, then my sister. How am I supposed to get over losing the people I love?”

  Kimber shrugged and stroked her cat. “I don’t know. Maybe you can’t. But you have to move forward. You haven’t done a single thing since Sara died.”

  “I have so.”

  “Yeah?” Kimber raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Name something.”

  “I’m going to start my own business.”

  “Oh yeah? When? I’ve been hearing about your ‘talent agency’ since before Sara died. At the time, I thought you’d really go through with it. I thought you could do anything. But I bet you’re no further on it now than you were then. I bet you don’t even have a name picked out. It’s just talk. All you’ve got is talk.”

  Mr. Giggles pounced onto the kitchen table, sending wet cat fur and Lori’s mail flying everywhere.

  “I hate your cat.” Lori contemplating chucking the little monster back outside.

  Kimberley scowled. “Well, he hates you, too. Oh, and what’s this?” She bent and picked up an envelope from the floor. “From Playboy.” She ripped it open and unfolded the letterhead within. “Looks like they want you to be a centerfold. Guess that’s how you know your career is over.”

  Lori snatched the letter from her hand. “That’s not true.” She crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash without reading it. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Whatever.” Kimber scooped up her cat and kicked the rest of the mail in Lori’s direction. “I’m going to watch TV.”

  Steaming with frustration and injured pride, Lori stared after Kimber’s retreating form. She gathered up the rest of her wet, cat-scented mail. She dumped it all back onto the table before stalking out to the living room. A little alone time might help. Maybe some retail therapy.

  “I’m heading out!” Lori yelled at the empty hallway. She grabbed her purse from the couch and stalked to the door.

  “Where you going?” came Kimber’s bored voice. “Everything’s closed but bars and strip joints.”

  Far, far away. “Driving. Maybe off a nice, tall bridge.”

  Scuffling footsteps raced down the hall. Kimber skated into the living room. “Let me find my shoes and I’ll go with you.” She shrugged into a floor-length faux fur coat and kicked out a tennis shoe from behind the recliner.

  Lori shook her head. It wasn’t that cold, and Kimber looked like a yeti.

  “I’d rather be alone.”

  A flash of hurt crumpled Kimber’s face and, just as quickly, the look was gone.

  “Fine.” She strode back down the hall, one shoe on, fur coat floating behind her, head held high.

  Lori considered calling her back with an apology and a promise to hang out later, then changed her mind. With the mood she was in, she’d only wedge the distance between them even further.

  She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Davis groaned when the early-morning scent of a burning coffee pot wafted down th
e hall from the break room.

  Thank God he relied on tasty, non-burnable Mountain Dew.

  “Your buddy, the Detective Sergeant, is totally out to get you,” Tonda Carver huffed as she plopped into her chair.

  “Why me?” Davis asked, not expecting an answer. “You’re my partner. Shouldn’t he be after both of us equally?”

  Carver shrugged and fiddled with a cough drop. “Don’t ask me. He’s a man. You’re a man. Ain’t a woman on this earth who understands men.”

  “Thanks.” Davis debated telling her than men didn’t understand women either, but figured she already suspected as much.

  “All I know is, you better solve this case and solve it fast. He’s under pressure due to the whole ‘high profile’ aspect, and he’s making noises like the fall guy won’t be him.”

  “Nice.” This wasn’t the first time his superior officer breathed down his neck.

  Carver sucked the orange-scented lozenge into her mouth, distending her left cheek with its bulge. “Didn’t he threaten to lateral you last year?”

  Davis clenched his jaw.

  The threat had nothing to do with his performance on the job and everything to do with the one aspect of his life he’d never had any control over—his father, the unstoppable defense attorney from hell.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “But he knows I’d rather stay here.”

  She snorted. “No kidding. It wouldn’t be a threat if you wanted to work somewhere else, dingdong. You think he might do it?”

  He threw a pencil at her. “What do you care? You’ll be on maternity leave.”

  Carver scooped up the pencil and stuck it behind her ear. “Raising a kid without a father will be hard enough. Coming back without my partner—now, that might be too much. I expect your butt to be in that chair.”

  “Then let’s get back to work. What do we have?”

  “First off, a witness.”

  “Potential witness,” Davis corrected. “She called it in, she didn’t say she saw it.”

  “Whatever.” Carver sucked loudly on the cough drop, most likely to annoy him. “Obvious surfaces were wiped clean, but forensics is checking the rest of the place for prints.”

  Davis nodded. “Lots of traffic, so that will take a while.”

  “A single blonde hair found stuck in the blood. What color is the witness’s hair?”

  As if he could forget. “Blonde.”

  Carver retrieved the pencil from her ear and scratched a note on her desk calendar. “So, we might have a suspect.”

  Wrong. “No motive, no suspect. Statistically, most killers are men who–”

  The lead snapped from Carver’s pencil. “Statistically, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Davis didn’t look at her. He already knew.

  “The M.E. said Turner’d been shot in the crotch. Crotch shots are personal. Personal, Hamilton. Turner being ridiculously heterosexual, one has to assume the perp could be a disgruntled female.”

  “Our job isn’t to assume. Our job is to find proof.”

  Carver rolled her eyes.

  “First we have to be suspicious. Hence, a suspect. Let’s see, perp might be female. Whaddya know, Ms. Summers is female. Blonde hair found on scene. Whaddya know, Ms. Summers is blonde. Motive? Hookup gone bad, spurned for a new lover, could be anything. Means? Money buys guns and supermodels have money. Opportunity? She called it in herself. And—here’s the big ‘and’—the blonde hair was lodged in a pool of the vic’s blood.”

  Carver crunched on her lozenge. “What the hell was she doing next to the body if she wasn’t killing him?”

  Davis wished he could throw something at Carver heavier than a pencil.

  “Checking his pulse?” he suggested. “CPR?” Lots of reasons. Hell, Lori didn’t even kill flies. “In every murder case, somebody has to come across the body or the police would never be involved. Crotch shots can come from jealous boyfriends, too. Bet not all of Turner’s women were single.”

  “So let me get this straight. She hears shots. She knows somebody with a gun is inside.” Carver’s tone turned sarcastic. “So she enters, despite a deranged gun-wielder present, just in case there’s any dead bodies she can do CPR on?”

  Put like that, his explanation did sound a little weak. “We’ll have to ask her.”

  “Oh yeah, suspects are always truthful. That’ll clear things right up.”

  Davis counted to ten before answering. Lori had never been a liar. Or a murderer. Of course, that had been high school, but how much could someone change?

  “I ran her name through every database we’ve got. Nothing. Not even a parking ticket.”

  “See!” Carver’s eyes lit with triumph. “You thought she was mighty convenient, too.”

  “No, I’m a cop. I’m efficient. Stop making me crazy.” Davis counted to twenty this time. “Carver, you said yourself that supermodels have money. Why would a supermodel steal a wallet?”

  She shrugged. “There’s more reasons to steal a wallet than just money.”

  “Top secondary reason being to conceal identity of the victim. You can’t tell me she thought nobody would notice the dead rap star looked mysteriously like guy in the posters plastered over all the walls.”

  “Bullet to the face. Besides, there could’ve been something else in the wallet. We don’t know because we don’t have the wallet.”

  “Carver–”

  A tidal wave of low wolf calls swept through the room. Conversation ceased, then continued in louder, faster tones. He knew without turning to the window what he would see.

  “Hamilton,” Carver cooed with a smirk, crunching her cough drop between her teeth. “Looks like your one o’clock is here.” She grinned and made fish faces.

  Davis glared at her. He stood to face the glass.

  And then there she was.

  High, strappy sandals. Long, skinny skirt. Some sort of flowy top. Slender neck. Perfect face obscured by massive movie-star sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses indoors?

  And that long, silky hair he loved so much, gone. Instead, her locks tumbled in a sexy, tousled shag. Different look, same effect. His body tightened in response, although whether to memory or reality, he didn’t know.

  He sure didn’t need a leggy blonde to screw things up. Not his case, not his life, and not his otherwise clear thinking.

  “I’m going to take her into Interrogation Room One. You can watch through the glass.”

  Carver smirked. “Whatever.”

  Davis crossed to the doorway and stepped into the main antechamber. With one pointed look, junior officer Bock made a beeline for Lori’s side.

  Man. Had they truly not spoken since high school?

  She’d been so creative, so wild, so fun. She’d smelled like flowers and cheap shampoo and grinned at him constantly.

  Now she looked like money and expensive perfume, just like Juliana, his high-society mistake. Lori had never been pretentious and full of herself before, but she hadn’t been rich and famous before, either.

  People changed.

  * * *

  Noon had come and gone. She should have been here hours earlier… and she might have, if it weren’t for sleep evading her until just before dawn.

  Lori stood inside the entranceway to collect her breath and her thoughts for a moment. She tugged open the large glass door, stepped inside, then sagged against the cool concrete wall.

  No. She couldn’t breathe. It was just like Daddy’s precinct.

  Pungent bleach, fast-food hamburgers and forgotten dust mixed in the recycled air. White, textured walls. Blinding fluorescent lights. Tile floor, scuffed and stained. Phones ringing. Handcuffs clinking. Voices. Laughter. The screech of rusty file cabinets.

  Lori closed her eyes and willed herself to forget.

  “Miss?” came a hesitant male voice.

  With a sudden swallow and a jerk of her head, Lori focused on the young uniformed officer eyeing her as if she were
a wild animal. His nametag introduced him as Jim Bock. Lori nodded and thrust out her hand.

  “Officer Bock, I’m–”

  “Lori Summers. I know.” He shook her hand as though it were made of delicate porcelain. “I’ve still got that Swimsuit Edition from two years ago. Awesome to meet you.”

  Great. That wasn’t an awkward conversation opener, or anything. Lori glanced around the open area and gulped.

  The two female cops were eyeing her curiously, but all seven of the men—three in cuffs, four in uniform—stared at her as though practicing x-ray vision. Lori extricated her hand from the officer’s loose grip and forced her features into a smile.

  “I was asked to come in today because I called in what sounded like gunshots at Tommy Turner’s studio.”

  “Oh, it was definitely gun shots. What were you doing there, anyway?”

  The expression on the young officer’s face broadcasted his belief that she’d been there to add herself to Tommy’s gaggle of groupies.

  Much as Lori didn’t want people thinking she made a practice of having sex with rap stars, claiming she’d shown up to get an autograph sounded equally lame. Even Tommy hadn’t believed her. Why would the cops be any different?

  “I… Do you know who I’m supposed to meet with?”

  “Hold on.” He turned and made wild hand signals at a large window connecting an adjoining room before turning back to Lori. “Either Detective Carver or Detective Hamilton.”

  A strange sensation bubbled in Lori’s stomach. It couldn’t be. But–

  “Did you say Detective Hamilton?”

  The young cop stopped, turned, and shot her a surprised look. “Yeah. Davis Hamilton. You know him?”

  Oh boy. Did she ever.

  This didn’t seem the time to mention she knew him biblically, that the first time she’d seen him she’d lost her heart. And later, along a stretch of beach notorious for kissing couples, lost quite a bit more than that.

  “Maybe,” she hedged.

  Davis had no doubt forgotten their long conversations, their first tentative touches, those stolen moments in the photography dark room.

  She’d have sworn he’d forgotten her, too, if he hadn’t shown up at Sissy’s funeral. He’d been somber, silent, stricken. She was so sure he felt the pain that stabbed inside her soul, but he’d left without saying a word.