by Liliana Hart
“I brought a contract with me. I’d never expect you to work for free, but you’ll need to sign the non-disclosure agreement along with the contract. I think you’ll find the fee and expenses are satisfactory.”
Hank eased a pair of black, plastic framed cheater readers from his breast pocket. The contrast between the glasses and his salt and peppered hair completely changed his appearance. He was a modern-day Clark Kent.
“Why the NDA?”
“Because my book ideas are my intellectual property and they’re sold on proposal. Even though this is a cold case I don’t want someone else hurrying to write the same book to beat me to the release date. It basically says you can’t say anything about what we do or discover.”
“Okay,” he said, signing. He slid it back to Agatha and then his expression changed.
“What’s wrong?” Agatha asked.
“We’re not exactly equal partners now, are we? Just because you’re paying me doesn’t mean I work for you.”
Agatha hated to break it to him, but it kind of meant he did work for her.
“Let’s just say when we’re working the case that we make decisions together. When it comes to the finances and expenses though, I’m calling the shots. Fair enough?”
“More than,” he said. “Now tell me about our victim. What’s her name?”
“Nicole Green,” Agatha said.
“It’s always important to give them a name. The victims are never just faceless, nameless beings. Just because it makes it easier on us to treat them that way doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”
“I know,” she said. “I see them in my dreams. They speak to me. And what we do to bring them justice and let them rest in peace never seems like it’s enough.”
Agatha grabbed a clump of napkins from the metal dispenser and wiped the table dry. Then she hefted her briefcase from the seat next to her onto the tabletop, turning each wheel of the combination lock and then snapping open the clasps.
“This is what I’ve been able to get hold of from internet and public records searches. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
Hank slid each page around, putting them in a straight line in front of him, until they began to show a pattern of reporting and chronology. Agatha picked up on what he was doing and felt the warm satisfaction of knowing she’d made the right choice in partners.
“This is more than a good start,” he finally said. “There’ve been many times all I had to go on was an anonymous phone call or tip written on a torn napkin.”
“Nicole was sixteen-years-old and attended Bell County Preparatory School. She and her father lived in the unincorporated portion of Bell County. It’s about a twenty-minute drive from here. There’s good news and bad news,” she said.
“What’s the good news?”
“Your pal Sheriff Coil has jurisdiction.”
“And what’s the bad news,” he asked.
“Your pal Sheriff Coil has jurisdiction and he’s a might touchy about the case since it went unsolved.”
“I’ve known Sheriff Coil a lot of years. He’s a great cop and a good man. Maybe you should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Look, I realize he’s your friend, but you can lay off the intimidation tactics,” she said, straightening her spine. “I’m speaking the truth. He might be a great cop and a good man, but the facts remain that this case is unsolved and it was his responsibility to solve it. And the fact also remains that he doesn’t seem too thrilled about getting new information or having someone else look into it.”
“I promise you that Coil wants this case solved more than anyone. Cops stick together, Aggie.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said, raising a brow. “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that you and Coil are friends. If he’s got nothing to hide and wants this case solved, then he should be open to talking to you about it and getting you whatever information you need.”
Agatha stacked all the files and put them back in the briefcase.
“What, are you taking your toys and going home?” Hank asked.
“No, I’m avoiding the morning rush and curious eyes. We can take this back up at my house. Believe me, the gossip mill is already having a field day because we’re having breakfast together. When they find out why, the poop is going to hit the fan. Everyone here remembers Nicole Green’s murder, and everyone is more than aware that there’s probably a murderer living amongst us.”
“The poop is going to hit the fan?” Hank asked, laughing. “I think your name has you stuck in another era.”
“Good manners are timeless,” she said haughtily.
“Good point.”
Chapter Seven
Hank had admired Agatha’s house, even before he knew it belonged to her. It looked like a storybook cottage. It was gray stone with diamond-paned windows, and ivy grew riotously along the stone. It was small, but two-stories, and the front door was arched and painted bright red. It was a house that looked like it belonged to a creative person.
He’d followed her home after they’d left the café, and he’d parked his car in his driveway and walked down the street to her corner house. The temperature was rising, and he was thinking maybe the suit wasn’t the best idea. It was only May and the temperature was already hotter than what he was used to in Philadelphia. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like in the next couple of months.
He took off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. Agatha was already at the red door, putting her key in the lock. He noticed the cameras immediately, one at each corner of the house, along with spotlights. There were also cameras beneath the eaves near the door, so whoever was on the porch could be seen from the front and the back.
“That’s a lot of cameras,” he said, as she motioned him inside. The shrill beep of an alarm countdown greeted them and Agatha quickly typed in her code.
She grinned at him. “Those are just the ones you can see. It would be a bad idea to try and break in this place.”
He liked the inside of the house immediately, and he thought about what Karl had told him. Agatha could be living in a mansion somewhere, but instead she chose her childhood home. Comfortable was the first word that came to mind. The floors were wood and polished to a gleam, and the staircase was narrow and led straight up to the second floor.
The front of the house was tidy and there was the lingering smell of lemons, as if it had been cleaned recently. There was a sitting area to the left with a couch and two chairs positioned in front of a fireplace, and on the right was a room with a piano.
She led him past an open kitchen and breakfast area that had obviously been remodeled. The back of the house was all windows that looked out over a back yard that could have been a park, with big towering trees and a pergola with a porch swing.
The room just off the kitchen and breakfast room was clearly meant to be the family room, but Agatha had turned the entire space into her office. He guessed it made sense, considering the amount of time she must spend working.
“Ignore the mess,” she said.
“It’s kind of hard to do that. I don’t ever think I’ve seen this much of a mess.”
“It’s my work space. Creativity doesn’t necessarily lend itself to order.”
“Then I guess I’m glad I’m not creative.”
“It’s organized chaos. I know where everything is. I promise.”
An entire wall was lined with bookshelves, but the books weren’t lined like the ones in his office. Some were stacked, some were upright, and papers seemed to stick out of all of them. It was driving him crazy, and the urge to straighten them was strong.
The other wall had a white board that stretched from one side to the other, just like in a classroom, and it was filled with notes in black marker that looked like barely legible scribbles. A huge monitor sat on one side of the L-shaped desk along with a fancy ergonomic keyboard. A laptop sat next to it. On the oth
er side was a set of table shelves filled with bobbleheads. She had everything from Gandalf to Sherlock Holmes.
“Interesting company,” he said.
“It’s good to have someone to talk to when I’ve got plot problems.”
“Hmm,” he said, starting to reconsider what he’d gotten into. Maybe his first impression of her the day she come traipsing onto his lawn had been the right one. Maybe she was just nuts.
His attention went to the board with crime scene photos. They were graphic and brutal in their starkness, and it reminded him of the investigative war rooms he’d spent so much time in during his career.
“This is a heck of a setup. Other than the mess.”
“What, you thought I sat around in my pajamas all day to write?”
“Do you?”
She grinned. “Usually. There’s a reason I run every morning and eat out most of the time. It forces me to get dressed and leave the house.”
“Can we agree on one thing before we go over the murder board?” Agatha asked.
“Sure, what?”
“That no matter where this investigation takes us, we’ll let the facts and the reports speak for themselves?”
“I’m not sure what that means,” he said, confused. “Are we back to talking about Coil?”
“Not exactly.”
“What you have to understand that in most cold cases, the facts are usually skewed and the reports are usually shoddy. I can’t agree to limit our work to that,” he said.
“I guess what I’m saying is that if Sheriff Coil did a crap job, then we should acknowledge it and do a better one.”
Hank’s muscles tensed. Coil was one of his closest friends. He was the reason Hank picked Rusty Gun for his relocation. He didn’t know what Agatha had against Coil, but it was starting to get on his nerves.
“Fine,” he said, just to get things moving. “Where’s the board?”
Agatha stared at him a few seconds, as if she was debating whether or not to say more, but wisely, she stayed silent.
She grabbed a remote from the desk and clicked a button, and automatic blackout shades lowered on all the windows. She clicked again and the dry erase boards slid open and then rotated back into the wall. In their place came an electronic dry erase board and a Prometheus board. Two overhead projectors lowered from the ceiling.
“Holy crap,” Hank said.
“You like? I’ve got to spend my money on something. The house might be old, but I can promise everything is the latest in technology. The whole house runs on voice activated commands when I want it to. The security system would make you cry if you knew all of its capabilities.”
“It’s like the Bat Cave”
“Look at you! You know comic books. You didn’t seem like the type.”
“Everybody knows Batman. What do you mean I don’t seem like the type?”
She crinkled her nose, and he’d started to recognize it as a habit of her thinking something she might not want to say out loud.
“You just seem very…proper,” she finally said. “You’ve got the suit. And then there’s the way you arrange your trash.”
“What’s wrong with the way I arrange my trash?”
“Nothing,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure it really helps the garbage men a lot to organize everything like that. You put your recyclables in the bin all neat and orderly, your cardboards are precisely the same size, and your beer bottles make a cute little pyramid.”
“Have you been going through my trash?”
“Of course not,” she said, waving away the question. “I’m very observant, and I run right by it on my morning jogs. Now, if you’re done with the interrogation, maybe we can get back to work.”
Hank raised his brows, amused at how she’d turned the tables on him.
“I don’t drink coffee,” she said, “but I’ve got a stocked Keurig in the kitchen, so help yourself.”
“You don’t drink coffee?” he asked. “At all?”
“Nope. Disgusting stuff. Smells nice though. I live on tea. Here’s the box,” she said, lifting the box of information she’d received from the sheriff’s office onto the desk. “You can make yourself comfortable and start going through it.”
“Right,” he said. Hank looked for a place to hang his jacket and finally decided to lay it over the back of a chair, along with his tie. He unbuttoned his top button, rolled up his sleeves, and decided to take her words of making himself at home to heart, so he headed for the Keurig to make himself a cup of coffee.
“Sugar is in the bowl next to the Keurig,” she called out. “Milk is in the fridge.”
Hank grunted in appreciation and then brought his cup back to her office area. She was at her desk, already absorbed in whatever she was reading. She had a long table, like a mini-conference table, that divided the room from the kitchen and breakfast area. She really did have everything they needed, and more. He grabbed the box, surprised at how light it was, and then took a seat in a straight-back chair at the table. He always worked best in a straight-back chair.
Hank opened the box and the first document sitting atop a scattering of other papers was the Bell County Sheriff’s Office report filed by the first deputy on scene. He lifted the single page report up by his thumb and forefinger and frowned. Then he started to read and he understood what she meant when she’d told him it was less than exemplary police work. He couldn’t dispute that.
“This is it?” he asked. “A half-written report?”
“Yep. It’s a big box with a whole lot of air in it. I’ve got the crime scene and autopsy photos I can put up on screen when you need them.”
“I’m good for now. What we need is facts. And I’m not getting them from this thing,” he said, dropping the single sheet of paper back into the box. “You’re going to have to fill in the gaps for me.”
Agatha flipped the projector on so images came on the screen, and she lowered the lights halfway.
“Like I told you before. We’ve got a sixteen-year-old girl who attended a private prep school. Tuition isn’t cheap for that place, but Nicole was there on full scholarship. She was a bright kid, and pretty in an understated way. Her home life was rough. Mom died young, and she was left to be raised by her father. And let’s just say he’s not exactly someone you’d want to spend a lot of quality time with. He’s a farmer by trade, but not a successful one. Mostly he drinks.
“The medical examiner ruled Nicole Green’s death as a homicide. COD was blunt force trauma to the left temporal bone.”
The autopsy photos came up on the screen, and Hank studied the head wound intently.
“The skull was shattered with such force that shards of bone were found in the brain. She wouldn’t have survived even if medical personnel was standing right there.”
“Any signs of sexual assault?” Hank asked.
“She was sexually active. They interviewed the boyfriend during the investigation. He said they’d been having sex about three months, and he admitted that he’d seen her and they’d had sex around the time she disappeared, but his alibi held up. But the ME’s report said she’d had sex just prior to her death.”
“Anything else they failed to follow up on?”
“Oh, and she was pregnant.” She added
“How come none of that’s in the police report?” Hank asked, looking into the box again in case he missed something.
“Don’t know. The only reason I know that much is because I started asking questions. And it’s not like my source is exactly reliable. George Mayfield was a deputy during that time, right at the end of his career. He retired the next year, and then a couple of years after that was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The man could remember every detail of every case he ever worked. Except he couldn’t remember names.”
“Those aren’t exactly hard facts,” Hank said.
“No, but it’s what we’ve got. The ME didn’t find anything to dispute that she was having anything more than consensual sex. There was no vagin
al bruising, no skin under the fingernails, no bites or scratches. Nothing to indicate assault pre-mortem other than the killing blow.”
Hank moved closer to the pictures and whistled softly under his breath while he was thinking.
“What about post-mortem?”
“Plenty of those. She was killed on her property, on a small hill that overlooks a pond. It’s an overgrown area. Lots of hackberry trees and tall grass. Whoever gave her the blow to the head rolled her down the hill and tried to conceal her body in the pond. She’s got a bunch of post-mortem scratches.”
“So the questions are, what was she doing there and who was she with? Was the murder weapon ever found?”
Agatha shook her head, “Nope. But the ME report suggests the victim was probably waist-high when the blow was struck. Maybe on her knees. The weapon’s trajectory was slightly downward, but across. Like swinging a baseball bat.” She demonstrated the swing.
“So the boyfriend is alibied. Maybe she’s seeing someone on the side? The place you’re describing doesn’t exactly sound like a romantic oasis. It’s a place you go because you want to hide. To keep a secret. So Nicole meets up with this mystery boy, has sex, and then when she’s getting up, he clocks her over the head with something like a baseball bat.”
“And that brings us nicely to my next point,” Agatha said. “Some of the kids at school said that Nicole was seeing someone else. That she had some secret boyfriend, but none of them knew his name. And it just so happens, Nicole’s father, Walter, said one of his field workers disappeared around the same time.”
“You know what they say about coincidences,” Hank said. “Who’s the one who suggested Nicole and the field worker were seeing each other?”
“Walter Green,” she said. “Like I told you, a few of her friends at school said she was supposedly dating some older guy, but they’d never met him and didn’t really care to.”
“What did the boyfriend have to say about that?”
“He said he’d heard the rumors, but didn’t believe them. Apparently, there was quite a mean girls club at that school, and Nicole was often the target.”
