Justified

by Carolyn Arnold

  It was then she heard the noise, the faint squeak—no, it was a whine. It took her a moment to ascertain where it was coming from. Hershey. Her breath paused as she contemplated her new responsibility. She walked across the floor, still in her boots, to the kennel, which sat to the side of her living area. He was laying straight out, his nose pressed between the bars, looking like he’d been confined to a prison cell. His whining turned into barking. He wanted out, and now. His deep cocoa eyes watched her.

  What am I supposed to do with a dog?

  And what was that smell? She was too tired for this. She was always too tired. He kept barking, the noise holding more of a desperate edge as it went on. The sharp barks ricocheted in her head, and almost immobilized her. But there was definitely a smell… She sniffed deeper and gagged. She knew exactly what it was and a look to the back of the kennel confirmed her suspicion. Hershey had left a kiss—if you wanted to call it that.

  “Bad dog.” She was going to be sick… She held her breath, but that ended up making it worse when she gasped for air. She could taste it. How she hadn’t detected the odor the second she entered her apartment, she had no idea.

  Hershey’s barks transformed back to high-pitched whining that was quickly giving her a headache.

  “Quiet!” She bent over to unlatch the kennel, the smell overpowering her as she lowered to her haunches. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. Guess there were two things she couldn’t handle.

  With the door open, Hershey bounded out, taking off in a swirl and making his way around the living room, claws clicking on the wood floor as he struggled to remain on four legs.

  Where did he find the energy? She owed Terry for this one.

  Hershey came up behind her and pulled on her sweater with his teeth.

  She shooed him away. “Stop it.”

  Maybe she should find amusement in his love for life, but at this moment, she was too terrified of the consequences of her Christmas gift. Guess now was the time to rope him up, load him onto the elevator, and take him outside.

  This morning at breakfast, Terry had tried reassuring her that having a dog wouldn’t be that bad. She’d adjust and even come to welcome this new addition to her life.

  “He’ll give you company,” he had said.

  Somehow, she had managed not to roll her eyes when he said this, but she had wondered how desperate she was coming across. As if reading her mind, Terry had gone on to say that dogs were great for those who just wanted someone to listen and not offer advice. There he had her. That would be a welcome addition. People were always in a hurry to provide input and suggestions.

  “You’re going to have to learn the house rules.” A waft of the ripe air hit her. “And rule number one—” She rose to her feet. He jumped around her, let out a single bark, an arf.

  She laughed. His love for life was somewhat contagious and even managed to minimalize what he had done.

  “Rule number one: no doo-doo in the house.” She couldn’t believe she was talking like this. If anyone overheard this, she’d have to kill them. “Rule number two: no chewing on my clothes.” She knew there would be a much longer list to follow, but those two would suffice for the time being.

  Now, how was she going to clean up Hershey’s Christmas gift to her? She looked around the apartment as if it would miraculously provide an answer. Too bad she couldn’t just wiggle her nose like Samantha from Bewitched and have the whole sordid mess cleaned up, a sparkle shining off the edge of the kennel sounding with a chime.

  Maybe if she approached it like a crime scene, focused and methodical. But all the blood from the current investigation came back with clarity. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t made for cleanup. She had to think of a different analogy. Hershey was a baby, her baby, and she needed to clean it up for him.

  Gah! She didn’t ask to be anyone’s mommy.

  Eventually, after working out several scenarios and enduring numerous out-of-body experiences, she got it cleaned up. She was thankful that Hershey hadn’t rolled in it. The thought made her lips curl. Yes, things could have been worse.

  “All right, let’s go.” She headed over to the coat hooks and grabbed the leash that dangled there. She needed to get this over with so she could get downtown. “Come here, buddy.” She bent down, and he ran over, jumping at her and trying to reach her face. “Okay, rule number three: no licking.”

  It wasn’t easy trying to get the collar around his neck. He kept jumping at her in an effort to lick her face.

  “Calm down.”

  He should have come with an operation manual. She just got him latched up and the phone rang. She cursed audibly and let go of the leash.

  She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby.” It was Blake Golden.

  She was happy to hear his voice. She dropped onto the couch and watched Hershey sniff his cleaned digs, the tether trailing behind him.

  “I miss you,” she said and regretted doing so immediately. The few seconds of silence on his end weren’t helping.

  “I’ll be back Saturday night.”

  He stated it so matter-of-factly that she felt needy. And she hated feeling that way. Somehow, she had to retract what she had said or at least move beyond it, change the direction of the conversation and make him forget what she had said. “How’s the family? You enjoying things out there?” Small talk? Surely, she could do better than that.

  “Yeah, it’s not bad. Mom’s drunk on eggnog, and I know it’s only the middle of the—” He was cut short by a loud, animated woman in the background. “That’s Mom.”

  Madison laughed.

  Blake went on. “My brother ate way too much turkey last night. We have the family dinner on the Eve. He was sick and didn’t make it up the stairs to the bathroom.”

  All the potent smells of the last twenty-four hours mingled together in her mind. “Yuck.”

  “Don’t tell me that grossed you out. You’ve probably seen a lot worse.” He laughed.

  Don’t remind me…

  And he didn’t know that side of her, the one that cringed every time she arrived at a scene and couldn’t stand the sight of anything remotely disgusting. In fact, he never would have to know.

  “Anyway, I just called to say hi, tell you I was thinking about you on Christmas Day.”

  She gave him the same reaction as he’d given her when she told him she missed him—silence. Maybe their relationship was advancing too quickly.

  “I’ll be home Saturday like I said,” Blake began, “and I want to treat my girl to dinner at Piccolo Italia.”

  “Sounds great.”

  Piccolo Italia—literally translated “Little Italy”—was his favorite restaurant. It was world-renowned for its authentic Italian dishes. Their pasta and sauces were made fresh daily. They only served a dinner menu, and the main entrées started at forty dollars and went up from there. But the meals were a good value. Italians had a love for life, but they also had a love of plenty.

  What was she going to do when this relationship ended? His treating her to the relatively greater things in life was becoming ingrained in her. It wasn’t hard going up, but it was the coming down part, the crashing, that would be hard to readjust to.

  Hershey walked over to the side of the area rug, sniffed, and bent down over the wood floor. She kept her eyes on him.

  “I’ll make reservations for the second seating.” He sounded happy, although he was likely having a better time than she was to start with. She was stuck here in mounds of snow, alone on Christmas. “There’s something important I’d like to talk with you about—”

  “Shit!” A golden puddle was forming around Hershey’s paws. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” She hung up the phone.

  Was this dog just a producer of waste? Whatever went in came out moments later?

  “Hershey!”

 
; The hardwood better not stain or the superintendent would have her ass. She could hear him now:

  “That will be coming from your security deposit! We’ll have to refinish the entire floor.”

  The dog slinked between an end table and a chair. Her anger must have been obvious enough that he detected his wrongdoing. She worked at soaking up the urine with paper towels. It didn’t seem to have marked the floor. She disinfected the area using cleaner, and then donned her coat and boots before grabbing the leash that was still hooked to Hershey’s collar. She tugged on it. “Come on.”

  Hershey just stood there, paws welded to the floor.

  “You’re kidding me. Right? This has to be a joke or—” she looked heavenward “—is this some cruel punishment for a past wrongdoing?” She pulled on the leash again. He didn’t budge. “Hershey. Another rule: when I say come, you come.”

  His body quivered, and she felt somewhat horrible for scaring him to this point, but she didn’t move to soothe him. Her mind was stuck on where her conversation with Blake had left off—he had something important to talk to her about. It distracted her to the point that she had almost forgotten about her intentions to go downtown. First the dog, and then she’d take care of business.

  She glanced at the small, lit Christmas tree on the way out of the apartment and wondered what it would be like to have a normal life. But then, again, who could define normal?

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” asked Officer Ranson, who regularly manned the front desk down at the station during the day.

  Madison tapped the counter. “Could ask you the same.” She passed Ranson a smile but kept moving.

  Today Ranson’s hair was more traditionally colored, black with blonde highlights, but she had a rainbow of hair colors she chose from. Madison could envision the woman stocking up on dye as it went on sale. Superiors had discussed the matter of her color choices many times, and how a person who sits at the front representing the department should appear professional. But Ranson knew they couldn’t fire her based on personal style, so she kept it how she liked.

  Files were stacked high in Madison’s inbox. She functioned best in what appeared to be disorganized to others.

  She opened a desk drawer on the left, pulled out a folder, and opened it. It was a list of evidence collected from the scene. She rifled through the case file and the evidence log, drawing her finger down the page line by line. What she was looking for wasn’t there.

  She picked up her phone and dialed Cynthia at home.

  “What?”

  “Nice way to answer your phone.”

  “Saw it was the department and wasn’t thrilled.”

  Madison looked down. “Am I disturbing you?”

  “The nice answer or the honest one?” Cynthia lowered her voice. “I’ve got company. Be happy that I answered.”

  “So thankful.”

  Cynthia had her rash of affairs and somehow never allowed herself to become attached to any of them.

  “I need to ask you something,” Madison started. “Is the evidence log complete?”

  “Absolutely. It’s been checked, double-checked, and triple-checked.”

  “There’s no note of a cleaning checklist.”

  “Ah, there wasn’t one, then.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Now—”

  “One more thing. I’ll need you to take a closer look at Claire’s phone and see if you can confirm if a text message was sent to the maid and whether there’s any way we can see it.”

  “I’ll add it to my list of things to do. Now, what have I told you about calling me at home about work?”

  “Not to do it.”

  “Ding, ding, ding. ’Night, Maddy.”

  “Bitch.” Madison hung up, a smile on her lips, but the expression didn’t take long to fade.

  The first twenty-four hours of a case were crucial to solving it, and they weren’t anywhere close. Evidence pointed to a man and just because there wasn’t a cleaning checklist, it didn’t mean that Allison had been involved. But it also didn’t clear her. Her alibi was weak. She had said that she was home at the time of the murder, and there wasn’t enough to warrant dragging her in for questioning at this point. She would be worth another visit, though.

  Madison slipped the file into the drawer, and her eyes caught the label on another one. It read, Lexan, Bryan.

  This was the one cold case that she just couldn’t let go of. It had been the first to smear her previously untarnished close record. It had been four and a half years ago. The most frustrating thing about this murder investigation was that she knew who had killed Bryan, but the law required proof and that was where she fell short. She didn’t have sufficient evidence to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

  She pulled out the file, opened it on her desk, and wheeled her chair in.

  The file contained the basics, what they had in the way of evidence, and it was scarce. Photographs of the crime scene, including a couple of the bullet fragments that were pulled from the vic. Madison’s eyes rested on one of these photos. There hadn’t been enough to confirm striation and thereby determine a firearm.

  The bullets were .22 hollow points, but Madison knew they had been fired by one of Dimitre Petrov’s men. Petrov was a powerful Russian drug czar whose hands were bloodied by those he murdered, yet they may as well have been stained with invisible ink for the good it did in convicting him. It was only a rare twist of fate that he was found guilty of murder in the first degree for a man named Leroy Adams and levied with a life sentence.

  Madison knew the Russians favored the Sig Sauer Mosquito, and the ballistic tests had been run. Dummies were sacrificed for the art of science and for the justice of forensics. Yet nothing was conclusive.

  McAlexandar, who had been the sergeant at the time, had reminded her, “You can’t present the evidence, the evidence must be presented.”

  Where science failed, logic served as a compass. Bryan Lexan was the defense attorney representing Petrov at the time of his conviction. Due to this, he had garnered the attention of the Russians for failing their leader.

  She shuffled the photographs to look at one of the victim slumped in his driveway. One bullet to the chest, one to the forehead.

  Based on the estimated TOD, they had just missed the shooter. If she had only figured everything out moments sooner, Bryan Lexan could still be alive. And maybe that’s what ate away at her the most.

  She slipped the photographs back inside the file, put the folder back in her desk drawer, and exchanged it for a Hershey’s bar.

  -

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING, and Madison and Terry were getting ready to head over to meet with Darcy Simms.

  “No cleaning checklist?” Terry looked at her from the passenger seat.

  “No.”

  “Well, then Allison must be the killer.” The smirk started from the center of his lips and spread to the corners.

  Madison rolled her eyes. “No need for the sarcasm.”

  He pulled out on the seat belt and clipped it in. “I learned it from you.”

  She disregarded his comment. “I’m not saying she is necessarily the one who did it. Her thin frame pretty much tells us she wouldn’t possess the strength, but I think she knows more than she’s telling us.” Her cell phone rang and she picked it up. “Detective Kni—”

  “Got a call from Allison Minard.” It was the sergeant.

  “How nice. What did she have to say? Has she confessed to knowledge of the murder?”

  “Stop harassing her, Knight. She says you showed up at her home on Christmas Day pressing her.”

  “I was asking for things she wasn’t willing to provide.”

  “Well, may I suggest, or actually, tell you not to talk to her again unless you have cause to arrest her. Otherwise, I’ll
have no choice but to log a formal complaint on your file.”

  Am I to be thankful for the warning? Her earlobes tingled with the heat of anger.

  “Knight? You hear me?”

  “Yes.” She dragged out the one word.

  “Good.” He paused briefly. “Where are you with the case anyhow?”

  He might as well just come out and say it: it had been over fifty hours since time of death and they didn’t have any solid leads.

  “I’ll keep you informed.”

  “That’s the same vague answer you give me every time, Knight.”

  Then why do you ask the question every time?

  She had to bite down on her tongue—hard. “As soon as we know more, we’ll let you know.” This sort of blanket response was never usually enough to soothe him, but it’s what she had to offer right now.

  “You’re patronizing me again.”

  “Fine. Here’s the bit I have. At first impression, the method in which she was killed and the type of lifestyle Claire led points toward her murder being personal. For this reason, I’d say we’re looking at an isolated incident.”

  “I’m sure you can understand my hesitancy to accept that.”

  She made the wrong judgment call one time…

  “Keep me updated,” he barked.

  “Always do—”

  The sergeant hung up.

  Terry’s eyes were on her. “Let me guess, the sarge?”

  “And yet, Terry, you’re not the lead on the case?” She put the car into gear.

  DARCY SIMMS OWNED AND MANAGED By Design. It was an exterior design firm focused on transforming outdoor living spaces, patios, decks, verandas, and even balconies into oases.

  Their suite was on the second floor of a commercial building in an industrial area of town. Exposed ductwork gave the reception area a cool, minimalistic feel, but the room was accented with splashes of color. A sitting area consisted of a matched set of three chairs and a couch that were placed around a coffee table. The pieces gave the space a modern touch with their metal legs and brilliant blue plastic molded seats. Large, framed prints hung on the walls showcasing what Madison assumed to be past projects.