“That sounds good. I’ll follow you, if that’s okay. The next exit―”
“No, we’ll go down and turn around in one of the cross overs,” Jack offered.
“It says no unauthorized vehicles―”
Jack threw up a hand with two fingers up, like a scout hand signal. “I authorize you.” And that was the moment he heard something that changed his mind about talking to her.
She laughed. Three little words, but she was laughing, and Jack wondered if she’d laughed at all in the four months since the accident. Probably not much, if any. “Well, if you authorize me, then I guess it must be okay! Lead the way!” she sang out, her voice light and sweet.
He drove five below the speed limit, watching to make sure she kept up, but she was right there in her little car. When he pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot, she pulled in and parked right beside him. Out of habit, he waited until she exited her car and walked to the front door with her, her gait extraordinarily slow because of the brace and a cane she was using. She thanked him when he held the door, and in minutes they were in a booth.
“I guess I stopped you from going somewhere you wanted to go,” Aleta said as the server left from taking their drink orders.
“I was just going to a gun shop in Needmore to pick up a shotgun. No big deal.”
“Oh. Well, I hope the shop stays open so you can get there before they close.”
Jack smiled. “It’s just an old guy who works on guns. He’s usually home. I’m sure it’ll be fine. So, how are you doing?”
“Good enough, I suppose. I won’t lie―it’s hard. My leg is still bothering me all the time, and I go to physical therapy twice a week, although I think I probably do better on my own than I do with them,” she said and snorted.
“But you should still go. What about your arm?”
She held it up and pulled up her sleeve. It was a mess of suture scars. “Works pretty good. It was a clean break. That’s the only thing that saved it. My leg was more of a crushing injury. That’s why it was so bad. But I guess I’m doing okay.”
“I’m glad to see you up and around. You were in pretty bad shape.”
“Yes. I was. But I’ve worked through it.”
“And you’re working at the pancake restaurant?”
She blushed. “Yeah. I don’t know how to do much of anything. I went straight from my parents’ house to marriage with Joshua, and we worked for years trying to have a baby. He didn’t want me working. You know, pastor’s wife and all. So washing dishes is really more of a job than I thought I could get.”
“Nothing wrong with washing dishes. It’s an honest job. If you saw all the drug dealers and car thieves I see, you’d understand.”
“I’m sure.” The server came back with their drinks, and Jack watched as Aleta ordered an appetizer and a small salad. She’d asked for water to drink. No doubt she had to watch every penny, but he wished she’d ordered something more substantial. He’d decided when he got in his car out there on the parkway that he was paying, and he’d argue that point with her if she wanted to be obstinate.
“So you said you wanted to talk to me, to ask me something.”
“Yes.” She bowed her head, tented her fingers on the table, took a deep breath, and blew it out before she lifted her head and looked straight into his eyes. “Did you find anything unusual about that red car?”
That was not what he’d thought she was going to ask him. He’d been sure it would be something about her husband and child, how they’d looked, if they were already dead when he got there. “Like what?”
“Jack, I know things were confusing. I know a lot happened in a very few minutes. I know I was traumatized. But I’m going to tell you something.” He waited while she sat there, and he could see a war going on behind those eyes, something she had to say and didn’t want to. “I’m positive somebody shot that red car.”
“What?” That couldn’t be right. There were no bullet holes, none that anybody had found.
“That guy in that dark car? He shot that red car. I saw the gun in his hand, I heard the pop, and that’s when it crashed into our van. I’m telling you, he shot that car.”
Jack’s mind reeled. If what she was saying was correct, how had they missed that? “Ma’am, I―”
She puffed up just a little. “You want me to call you Jack, you’re going to have to call me Aleta.”
“Okay, um, Aleta, are you sure?”
“Positive. I couldn’t have dreamed that. My mind couldn’t have made that up. There was no reason. I can even tell you what the gun looked like.”
“Okay. What did it look like?”
“It was all black. And it had this symbol on it, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
A fucking Ruger. She DID see a gun! “That’s the emblem for a gun. Do you know which one?”
“I don’t know anything about guns, but I’ve seen it at the sporting goods store before. I just don’t know what it is.”
“It’s the logo for Ruger weaponry.”
“Huh.” She sat back and furrowed her brows, her eyes glancing upward in thought. Then she looked back to him. “So you believe me?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to think we missed a crucial piece of evidence, but yes―I believe that’s what you thought you saw.”
Her lids narrowed and those hazel eyes flashed with fire. “But are you going to do something with it?”
“Yes. I will. I promise.”
“Good. I knew I needed to talk to you. You are an angel, Jack. You just don’t know it yet.” She grinned and for the first time, Jack saw her as something more than a broken, bloodied body. The woman across the table from him had beautiful eyes, long, dark lashes, a headful of thick, dark, shoulder-length hair, and full, rosy lips. There was something else too. He’d noticed it as he’d followed her across the parking lot.
The woman was stacked. She was pleasantly curvy and perfectly proportioned. Her heart-shaped ass was more than noteworthy even with that horrible brace on her leg. She wasn’t wearing a lot of makeup, and her clothes weren’t fancy, but they were flattering and clean. There was at least a little pride left in her appearance. He knew how he’d felt four months after Heather died, and yet this woman had lost her husband and her baby, and she was still pulling herself together. Before he could stop himself, he said, “Aleta, I just want you to know that I admire you. You’re really moving forward and trying to have a life. My hat’s off to you.”
“You’ve lost somebody too, haven’t you?” He started to say something, but she interrupted. “I can see it in your eyes. You know, people who’ve lost someone, their faces look the same, but their eyes look older. Not old like old people. Old like wise. Like they’re holding that love inside and hoping to never lose it. So who was it?”
“My fiancée, Heather. She had leukemia. She fought it for eight years, but it finally took her.” Why am I telling her this? Jack wondered, and then it hit him. She understood. She could understand his pain, his longing, his loss. She could understand those early mornings when Heather’s ghost was so real he could reach out and touch it. Swallowing hard, he looked her in the eye. “I miss her every minute of every day. I don’t think I’ll ever love another woman.”
Aleta’s smile was gentle and warm. “You will someday. You’ll just have to meet the right woman, that’s all.”
Jack gave a little chuckle. “That’s what my mom says.”
“You have a very wise mom,” Aleta said and let out a chuckle of her own. “Oh, here’s our food.” The server placed her appetizer and salad in front of her and Jack’s burger in front of him. Just like that, everything was back to where it had been before that extraordinary conversation.
But it wasn’t. There was something about her that pulled at Jack, some inexplicable draw that made him want to talk to her, to look into her face, to hear her soft, lilting voice. For reasons he didn’t understand, he wanted to know her better and spend more time with her.
; When they finished their food and small talk, he walked with her back to her car. As she opened the door, she turned to him and smiled. “See? I was right. You are an angel, Jack. By the way, what’s your last name?”
“Fletcher. Jack Fletcher.”
“Well, pleasure to actually meet you, Jack Fletcher. I hope our paths cross again sometime.”
“Me too, Aleta.” He waited until she was in her little Toyota and had the door closed before he wandered over to his Camaro.
He had a shotgun to pick up, but that was going to have to wait. Before he went anywhere else, he had to talk to the forensics team that went over that car. There were a lot of things he didn’t believe, but there was one he did.
If Aleta Culp said she saw a gun and heard a gunshot, he was pretty sure she had.
“Nope. No bullet hole anywhere.” Dexter Yates shut Jack down immediately, but the trooper was having none of that.
“I know you didn’t find one, but I’m telling you, the woman says there was a gun and she heard a gunshot.”
“When did she tell you this?” Dexter asked and Jack blushed.
“I ran into her and she recognized me. She told me she had something she had to tell me, and that was it.”
“If I recall,” Dexter growled, taking his usual surly tack on things, “she was pretty well out of it when you got to the scene and was out for several weeks in the hospital.”
“Yes, but she has no knowledge of guns―none―and she insists she saw a gun and heard a shot. And she described a logo, a Ruger logo. I believe her.”
“Then why didn’t we find it?”
“What if it’s in a weird place? What if it’s somewhere you wouldn’t look?”
“But there was no brass,” Dexter pointed out, referring to the shell casings from a bullet.
Jack had already thought of a retort to that. “What if it was a revolver and not a semi?”
“Oh, so you think Wyatt Earp was out on the Bluegrass Parkway that morning?” He could hear the scoffing way Dexter was deflecting his ideas, and he didn’t like it, not one bit. He’d been with KSP long enough that a forensics guy should take him seriously, and this one didn’t.
“How about if I look at it?”
“At what?”
“The car.”
“The car is in the impound lot, unless it’s been taken to the scrap yard already.”
Well, shit! “Is it here or not?”
“Hang on, Inspector Clouseau.” Jack didn’t appreciate his Pink Panther reference one bit, but at least Dexter was beginning to be a little cooperative. He pulled a screen up on the lab’s computer and scrolled through it. “Looks like you’re in luck. It’s sitting out in the lot, but it’s slated to be crushed in three days.”
“Thanks. Where is it? What area? Bay? How do I find it?”
Dexter shook his head and sighed. “Good god. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Come on.” Jack practically danced behind him as Dexter opened the back door and shuffled out.
They wandered through the lot where cars in all manner of demolishment sat. There were also many that were part of investigations, sitting there whole, but Jack knew they’d been completely taken apart and put back together. Finally, at the far edge of the lot, they stepped up to a small, red car. “Here it is. Knock yourself out. Oh, you might want these.” Dexter handed Jack a pair of latex gloves and ambled back toward the building as Jack snapped them on.
The trooper went to work. He looked all over the car, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a bullet hole, not in the metal and not in the windshield. It was hard to tell in the area that was smashed up, but it was obvious the forensics team had tried to stretch out the wrinkles in the metal, and there were no holes there either.
Then he moved his attention to the tires. The right front tire was shredded, so it was impossible to tell anything about it. Some of the rubber was missing, and he assumed it had been ground to a powder on the asphalt, so much so that it couldn’t be recovered. The steel belts were torn and twisted, and in several places they’d been cut, no doubt by the team as they tried to figure out what happened to the tire. He couldn’t find a slashing cut on it, but it was almost impossible to tell. Still, there was something about that tire that was bothering him. Why hadn’t the other one come completely apart like that? The rim was bent too, not badly, but enough that Jack could see it, and it wasn’t on just one side. No, it was all the way around the wheel, and pretty evenly too, not as though it had just slid across the pavement.
That could only mean one thing―the tire was flat before the car hit the van. Had anybody realized that? How could a whole forensics team miss that fact? Oddly, the sidewalls had stayed on the wheel, their bead intact, and Jack peered up into the darkness of the interior space. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Valve stem. Wait. That’s not the valve stem. He pulled out the pen light he kept in his pocket and turned it on, then flashed the beam inside the tire.
For a split second, he couldn’t breathe. Aleta was right. There was a slug lodged in the inside of the wheel, looking for all the world like a rivet or some other automotive-type thing, but no. It was definitely a slug. Jack took off at a dead run for the building, threw open the lab door, and tore up the hallway. When he hit the auto bay, five techs working over a stolen Rolls Royce coupe looked up. “I need some help out here in the lot! Please!”
Ten minutes later, Dexter was apologizing profusely. “Jack, I don’t know how we missed that. I’m so fucking sorry, man. So fucking sorry.”
“I’m just glad I found it,” Jack responded, but inside he was seething. That was an important piece of evidence. It did two very important things.
It proved Aleta had seen and heard what she believed she had. And it proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there had been another vehicle there. The big question was, where was it? And who was driving it?
That, Jack Fletcher decided, was something he was going to find out.
He drove like a maniac back to Elizabethtown, almost threw the Camaro into a slide at the pancake restaurant, and ran through the front door. “Is Aleta here?”
“No. Today’s her day off,” one of the servers said.
Jack felt like an idiot. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that. I had lunch with her,” he muttered to himself, then barked out, “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”
The manager glared at him. “We can’t be giving her phone number out.”
“Then call her! Call her and tell her Jack Fletcher is here and he needs her number. Do it!” he almost screamed.
Hands firmly planted on her hips, the manager scowled. “And why should we do that?”
“Because I’m a Kentucky State Trooper and I insist. Badge twelve eighty-five. Call her!” he bellowed.
“Okay, okay! You don’t have to go gettin’ all huffy,” the burly woman answered, then disappeared into the kitchen. When she came back, she handed Jack a piece of paper. “There. Her name and address. Have at it.”
“Thank you. Thanks very much.” Jack ran back to the car. He pulled out his phone and looked at the number, but then made a very bold decision.
He was going to her house.
Tires squealing, he barreled out of the parking lot and down the city streets. Two miles down from the restaurant, he realized he was driving far too fast, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to see her, to tell her, to know she understood that he believed her.
The address was a four-unit apartment building, and according to the note, she lived in unit B. He straightened himself up and looked around before he knocked. Yeah, her little car was out front, so she was there unless she was with someone else, and he highly doubted that was the case. With only a wee bit of trepidation, he knocked on the door.
It opened slightly and one bright hazel eye looked out. “Yes?” She threw it open wide and her jaw dropped. “Jack? What are you doing here?”
He was so excited he could barely speak. “You were right, Aleta. You were one hundred percent righ
t. There was a gun. There was a gunshot. Somebody shot out that car’s right front tire. That’s why he hit your van! You didn’t imagine it. It was real.”
Aleta gave him a calm, simple smile. “Thank you for believing me. Would you like to come in?”
An incredible smell filled her whole house, and Jack recognized it immediately: Chili. “Please. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? I’ve got coffee, and I made sweet tea this morning.”
“Tea will be fine.” Why the fuck am I making myself comfortable here? Why did I even come in? Jack couldn’t figure it out. It was as though the woman had some kind of magnet and he was steel, drawn to her without a reason he could fathom. “So that’s all I wanted to tell you.”
She spoke to him with her back turned as she reached for a glass. “You have no idea why there was a man with a gun there?”
“Not a clue. I was hoping you could tell me something about him. Anything. Even if it seems insignificant, it could be important.”
He heard the ice cubes clink into the glass, and she turned to the table and poured it full. “It’s kinda fuzzy, but I do remember a little. He was tall, and the gun was huge. I remember thinking it was the kind of gun I’d expect someone like him to carry.”
“Someone like him … What does that mean?”
“I dunno. Kinda rough. Facial hair, but not neat. And shaggy hair.”
“What color?”
“Dark. I’m not sure what color exactly, but dark. He was wearing one of those long coats …”
“Trench coat?”
Aleta shook her head. “No. Like with the flap in the back, and the split, and―”
“You mean a duster?”
She smiled. “Yeah! That’s it. A duster. Like a cowboy.”
Well, I suppose Wyatt Earp was out on the BGP that morning, Jack’s brain hummed. “And a hat?”
Justice for Aleta Page 3
