Death in the Park

by London Lovett

  "Were you friends?" I asked. "Do you think you could get us closer to the scene?"

  A curt laugh shot from Raine's mouth. "You're on your own there, Miss Reporter." She flicked my press badge. "Dorothy and I had a big blowout fight in eighth grade and we haven't spoken since, and Inez and I were never friends."

  "Fine. I'm heading in then. I'm sure I'll be shooed away quickly, but I might be able to at least find out the victim's name."

  Before making any progress toward the scene, the chief's booming voice sent me back a few steps. "Where the heck is Jax! His day off ended an hour ago. Tell him to get over here now."

  I looked back at Raine. "Who is this Jax person he keeps bellowing about?"

  Raine's eyes sparkled suddenly. "Is he here?" she asked excitedly.

  "No, apparently not. Otherwise the chief wouldn't be bellowing for him." It seemed as if she was about to jump into one of her long narratives. I put up a hand to stop her. "Never mind. Tell me later. I'm going in."

  I decided sneaking stealthily about and skirting trees was only going to draw attention toward me, so I took a less conspicuous approach. I straightened my shoulders and strode confidently toward the scene as if I was supposed to be there.

  The first officer I sauntered casually past was on his phone and in the middle of leaving a message. He didn't even look my way. I slowed my pace to eavesdrop on his message.

  "Jax, this is Morgan. Where the heck are you? The chief is about to blow a gasket. We've got a homicide. Wilderness Park. Now."

  I strolled confidently toward the circle of policemen. The paramedics were already putting their equipment back, seeing that their services were not needed. The grisly scene was still the center of everyone's attention, and no one noticed the slim brunette peering curiously over their shoulders.

  Officer Reed, the woman Raine had pointed out, was fingering the contents of a wallet with a gloved hand. She pulled a card out of the wallet. "He was an employee of the Smithville School District. The name on the employee identification card matches the license. Alder Stevens."

  I sucked in a breath and made just enough noise to turn the chief's gruff expression my direction. "Who are you?" he barked.

  I quickly lifted my press badge. "I'm Sunni Taylor. I'm a reporter with the Junction Times."

  My identity reveal didn't seem to please him. His thick brows bunched together in a scowl as he took heavy steps toward me. "The Junction Times. Parker Seymour sent you here?"

  "Yes," I said confidently.

  "No," Chief Walker said curtly.

  "No?"

  "No," he repeated and came almost close enough that I could reach out and poke his big belly if I wanted to, which obviously I didn't. "I know Seymour didn't send you because we have a deal. He doesn't push his nosy reporters into our police business."

  "And?" I asked.

  "And what?"

  "You said you had a deal. He keeps his reporters away and you . . ." I paused for him to fill in the blank.

  "Nothing. That's it. One sided deal. No nosy reporters. So leave."

  I was finding Raine's nostalgic story about ice cream and skating trips hard to believe as I marched back toward where my friend was waiting for me. As I headed back, a loud motor scared birds from the overhead branches. With Raine's Hitchcock reference still fresh in my mind, I covered my head and ducked until the disgruntled birds flew away.

  I turned back as a convertible sports car pulled up to the murder site. The passenger was a woman with pale blonde hair tied back with a red ribbon. She had the shade visor pulled down and she was fixing her lipstick. The driver, a man with thick, brown hair, long and wild from the open car ride, pushed his dark sunglasses onto his head, exposing a pair of amber colored eyes. He was wearing jeans and tan, steel-toed boots. His shirt was tucked back behind the shiny badge clipped to his belt. It was hard not to be annoyed and impressed with the casual ease of his movements, as if walking onto a murder scene was something he did every morning after breakfast.

  I returned to where Raine was standing. She stared, mouth agape, at the police activity, but this time it had nothing to do with the body on the ground. I found myself equally interested in the newest member of the investigative team.

  "That, my friend—" Raine said over my shoulder. "Is Detective Brady Jackson. More commonly known as Jax."

  Chapter 8

  Detective Jackson mostly ignored Chief Walker's ire and rant about tardiness and showing up to a homicide investigation with a guest. After a few minutes of debriefing by the other officers, Jackson lumbered on long legs back to the sports car. He said something to the woman and tossed the keys onto the driver's seat. She climbed out in a skin tight dress and scooted on high heels to the driver's side. Jackson winced as she ground the gears for a few seconds before finding first and driving out of the park.

  "Is that his wife?" I asked with extra nonchalance to assure Raine I couldn't have cared one way or another.

  "As far as I know Jax is still single and as impossible to snare as a cheetah on steroids. Anyhow, I think we've seen everything there is to see. How about we head back to the jeep and eat those sandwiches? They are probably like melted goo by now."

  I badly wanted to stick around but without being able to get near the hub of activity, I was wasting my time.

  Raine and I hiked back out to the road where I'd parked the jeep. We climbed in and were instantly greeted with the smell of applewood bacon.

  "Hope it's still safe to eat." Raine unwrapped the grease stained napkin from the bread. She shrugged off the worry that it had sat too long in a hot jeep and took a bite. I was still too interested in the activity in the park. Officer Reed had been sent clear to the opposite side to talk to a woman who had been feeding ducks with her young son. It made sense that anyone near the park at the time of the murder would have heard a gunshot when Alder Stevens was killed.

  Detective Jackson and a few other officers fanned out across the park.

  "I guess they're looking for the murder weapon."

  "Huh?" Raine looked up with a mouthful of sandwich. "Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm going to need a drink to go with this gooey mess of a sandwich. If you're not going to eat, would you mind popping this jeep in gear and taking us back to town? I've got someone coming in for a palm reading at two."

  "Yeah." I was only half-listening to her. My gaze was riveted to the scene in the park. The quilters, the four sweet women I'd spent the morning with, had indicated that Alder had been asked to retire because of some event that was either sordid or distasteful. I wondered if his untimely demise was also connected to his untimely retirement.

  "Well, let's be on our way then. Fire up this magic carpet and ride."

  I turned to Raine. "There's a drinking fountain by the playground."

  Her dark brow arched sharply. "Yes, I know there's a fountain there because when I was at my friend Jill's ninth birthday party, her cousin Jonny threw up in the fountain. Too much cake and ice cream. I have not used that fountain since. Ever. If I was stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert with no water and close to death from dehydration and came upon that drinking fountain, I would choose death."

  "Well illustrated. So, no fountain water for you. Tell you what. Take my jeep to town. I'll walk back. It can't be more than two miles back to Firefly Junction."

  "Three point two to be exact. That's silly. Let's just go. Chief Walker made it pretty clear that you weren't going to get a story."

  I stared forlornly out at the investigation happening so close, literally right before my eyes. And yet I was stuck in a jeep trying to lip read. A shrill whistle split the air, pulling my attention to the water filled ravine. Detective Jackson waved over a few of the others and pointed to something in the water.

  I sat up. "I think they found the weapon."

  Raine looked past me to the park. "In that raging mass of water." She huffed. "Good luck retrieving that, Detective Adonis."

  I laughed at the nickname.

  "What? That'
s what everyone calls him. Are we going or what?"

  I tapped my keys and winked at her. "Sometimes there's a little hitch between second and third gear, and go slow on that bridge. It sounded pretty rickety as we drove over it."

  Raine climbed across as I stepped out of the car. "Just don't get yourself arrested by our grumpy police chief."

  "I'll try not to." I glanced back to the scene. Chief Walker had joined the others, along with a parade of curious ducks apparently convinced that the nice humans had bread crumbs. That gave me an idea. I reached past Raine and grabbed my sandwich from the console.

  "See you back in town, Raine."

  "Last chance to drive back."

  I waved her on and walked back toward the park. As I approached the group, a coroner's van pulled up to the scene. Chief Walker headed back toward the body to meet the coroner's team. It was my chance.

  I walked toward the ravine. The ducks smelled the food long before I reached them. They waddled toward me with a chorus of low, excited quacks. Fortunately, the police were too busy figuring out how to retrieve the weapon from the surging snow runoff to notice the ducks or the reporter.

  I plucked off tiny pieces of bread and tossed them onto the grass, while keeping a close eye on the activity just twenty feet away. I stretched up on my tiptoes and followed the detective's line of sight into the gulley. The afternoon sun glinted off something metal. I scooted a few feet closer and saw the focus of everyone's attention. A small pistol had been thrown into the ditch, no doubt in an attempt to wash away the murder weapon for good. Only the murderer had been very unlucky. Even though the ravine was four feet wide and filled with turbulent, rushing water, the weapon had landed on the flat ledge jutting out just below the bank. Unfortunately for the investigators, the water seemed to be surging higher as the afternoon sun did its work on the remaining fields of winter snow in the mountain range. It seemed that in an hour or two, the weapon would be washed away for good.

  I couldn't hear most of their conversation, but Officer Reed said the words 'bad idea, Jax' loud and clear as Detective Jackson broke away from the group. He lowered his sunglasses over his eyes and heaved himself easily over the chain link safety fence. His boots landed with a thud on the narrow stretch of solid dirt bordering the ravine. The gun was located on the other side of the four foot swell of water. There wasn't enough room to get a running start but that didn't stop the tall, well-built detective from jumping across. Two of the other observing officers broke into a short round of applause.

  Jackson ignored the accolades and set about planning the retrieval of the gun that was still well out of reach and getting closer to the rushing water with each passing minute. The ledge the weapon sat upon was a good five feet down from the narrow bank the detective stood on.

  It was hard not to watch with keen interest as the stunning detective, with his broad shoulders, thick head of hair and handsome face, ignored the inherent difficulty and dangers he faced without so much as a flinch or second thought. He dropped to his knees and then his stomach. He moved to the edge of the ravine.

  "Walker is going to kill me if I let his best detective get carried to his death in last winter's snow melt," Reed called through the fence.

  Detective Jackson laughed at her warning, then dropped his upper body over the side. He was treacherously close to having the bulk of his weight hanging down into the concrete canyon as he stretched his arm out and grabbed the weapon, even taking care to touch only the tip of the barrel, so as not to disturb any possible fingerprints.

  He flashed a bright white victorious smile as he lifted the gun up and free from its precarious perch. Another round of applause followed as he jumped back across the water with all the ease of an Olympic long jumper.

  I tossed out more bread to quiet my feathered lunch mates, while I strained to listen in on what Officer Reed had to say about the weapon. She pulled a latex glove from a leather pouch on her gun belt and took hold of the gun barrel.

  "I've seen this gun before. It's a Remington Rimfire from the 1930s. Dick Larson, the pawn shop owner, bought it from some guy traveling through town. He had a letter that claimed the gun used to belong to John Dillinger. He asked me to look at it. I told him he should send the letter in to be authenticated."

  "Dillinger's gun?" Jackson asked. "Glad I jumped the fence."

  "If the letter is authentic, which I highly doubt," Reed added. "This weapon would be worth a fortune. As it is, Dillinger connection or not, it's worth a nice chunk of change."

  "And now it's the center of our investigation," Jackson added.

  The conversation was so intriguing, I'd forgotten about the feeding frenzy at my feet along with the unfriendly police chief. Something hard and cold clamped down sharply on my hand.

  I had been so focused on the scene in front of me, I hadn't noticed that my duck friends had been replaced by three ornery white geese until one of them reached up and clamped its orange bill on the side of my hand.

  I semi-screamed and backed up. The geese honked and circled me like buzzards on a dead cow. In a panic, I tossed the rest of the sandwich at the menacing birds and backed quickly away.

  "Why is that nosy reporter still here?" Chief Walker bellowed as he marched red faced and somewhat out of breath toward his officers.

  Everyone turned to look at the nosy reporter and her band of rude, greedy geese. I caught the slightest dimple on Detective Jackson's cheek as he smiled at my predicament. The birds had sucked down my Layers sandwich like long necked vacuums and they were coming after me for more. I wasn't sure what was more frightening, the hungry geese or Chief Walker with his flared, angry nostrils.

  "I've got a good notion to arrest you as a possible murder suspect," Chief Walker pushed his coat back away from his belly and his shoulder holster as he jammed his hands on his hips.

  "Just feeding the ducks," I said quickly in my defense. "There's no law against feeding them."

  "Actually," Detective Jackson said as he pointed up to a sign bolted to the fence. It read, "Do not feed the wildlife."

  I shrugged. "They mean wolves and bears. Not ducks and geese."

  Jackson smiled back at me. For a second it felt like we were alone in the conversation and there was no one else but us. "Yes, because feeding wolves and bears is a favorite hobby for park goers."

  "Enough," Chief Walker barked. I'd very nearly forgotten he was standing there with his ruddy face and menacing scowl. "Leave the park now."

  I nodded. "Yes, yes, I'm going."

  Chapter 9

  Feeling more than a little disappointed by the entire day, I walked with heavy steps back to the road and my jeep, only to remember that I'd sent Raine back to Firefly Junction. I considered briefly that the three mile walk back would lift my spirits, but I was feeling terribly down about the whole day.

  The coroner van rolled past with Alder Stevens, the victim and the topic of my first assignment. Only now that assignment was obsolete. Poor Alder was no longer a retiree or the future recipient of a handmade quilt. He was the unfortunate victim of a murder. I wondered who on earth could have hated an elderly man enough to shoot him.

  I glanced back to the scene. Chief Walker, who liked to use a lot of arm gestures when he talked, gave what appeared to be a few brisk orders and then climbed into his car. Dust kicked up from his tires as he turned around and drove away from the scene. I slipped behind the short brick wall meant to keep the trash bin out of view and waited until he drove past. Without Chief Walker standing guard over the investigation, it would be much easier to take a stroll and survey the park.

  I made a mind map of the possible route the murderer had taken on his or her way out of the park. There were two known spots on my invisible map. The first being the remote corner of the park where Alder's body was found. After shooting the victim, the murderer apparently moved toward the center of the park to toss the weapon into the rushing water. I had no real way of knowing but I deduced that from there, the normal trajectory of a per
son fleeing the scene would mean the suspect kept on moving through the park to the parking lot.

  With the group of officers, the detective included, huddled around one police car, apparently planning their next steps, I felt free to wander the park. I walked to the spot where Jackson had climbed the fence to retrieve the gun. From there, I headed toward the playground area and the pond where my lovely goose friends had returned after devouring my sandwich. The three feathered devils looked beautiful and ever so serene floating along the rippling surface of the pond.

  I searched the grass and the pathway along the fence for any kind of evidence that someone had walked the path recently, but I saw nothing out of place. As I rounded the curve of the path, I noticed that the wrapper from a burger was dangling from the top of an overstuffed can. It seemed odd that there would be so much trash on a day when very few people had visited the park.

  I walked up to the can. The wrapper was sitting on top of a flat piece of cardboard that had been jammed into the can, taking up most of the free space. I reached in and pulled it free. The cardboard was a flattened box from canned peaches. It was a strange thing to find in a park. But what was even more odd was that the bottom edge of the flattened box was crusted in dirt, the same red clay dirt as where Alder was found. I turned the flattened box over and made note that it was a product of the Bounty Foods Company. It dawned on me that I might have found a piece of evidence, but I didn't want to be accused of tampering with it. I pushed it back down in the can and even replaced the burger wrapper. Then I mentally patted myself on the back for finding it before the police.