by Unknown
A very bad break for Dan.
Harper shook his head. “The new assistant coroner says it was manual strangulation. Judging by the bruise pattern she agrees that the attacker was male and damned strong. The vic’s hyoid bone was broken.”
“We have a new assistant coroner?” Jess didn’t remember Sylvia mentioning anyone new coming on board.
“Toni James,” Lori supplied. “Young, pretty, and bossy.”
“Really?” Hayes inquired. “How pretty?”
Lori rolled her eyes. She looked particularly nice today. The well-fitted slacks and feminine pullover were her usual fare, but there was a glow about her. Jess decided that being engaged to the man she loved agreed with her. So much had changed for Lori and her over the past few weeks. One of their first personal conversations had been about how their careers were their top priorities. Jess couldn’t help smiling. Now they were both planning weddings and Jess was pregnant.
She had barely managed to get the red skirt she loved so much to zip this morning. The belted jacket was her favorite. She might as well get used to the idea that she’d have to stick with the looser, stretchier outfits she’d finally taken the time to purchase. Oh well, gaining weight was a necessary part of the process. She abruptly realized that Cook was the only member of her team who didn’t know about the baby. She’d have to share that news with him on her next visit to the hospital.
“My grandmother had a saying,” Lori explained to Hayes, “pretty is as pretty does. We’ll just see how Dr. James holds up when we have a couple of victims with their hearts ripped out of their chests.”
Hayes looked to Harper and the sergeant shook his head in answer to the question about the new assistant coroner’s level of prettiness. “I got nothing, man.”
Jess laughed. It was nice to have even a glimmer of relief from the tension.
“On a more professional note,” Lori said pointedly, “I ran into a friend at lunch who passed along some good news. She works on the Gang Task Force with Valerie Prescott. Apparently, Prescott withdrew her EEO complaint against Chief Burnett. Prescott claimed it wasn’t worth the trouble and she was putting the past behind her.”
“That is good news,” Jess agreed. Lieutenant Prescott had been most unhappy when Jess was chosen for the position of deputy chief of SPU. Not being selected to take Allen’s position added insult to injury and, apparently, prompted Prescott to file the complaint against Dan.
“The EEOC would have seen through her allegations anyway,” Harper added.
Jess wished the rest of the false claims against Dan would go away so easily.
Silence lapsed for a few moments. The topic they needed to address now was immensely personal to Jess. As much as she wanted to know the truth about her father, she wasn’t looking forward to what she might find out about him. It was bad enough he’d cheated on his wife. If he had been a murderer to boot… She couldn’t wrap her mind around the inconceivable theory.
“Moving on.” Jess folded her arms over her chest. It was Saturday. Her team had worked back-to-back murder cases for weeks now. No one wanted to waste precious time. “Where are we on the reverend’s notes and my mother’s journal?”
Lori and Harper exchanged a look. The relationship between Jess and these two went well beyond the professional. Jess considered Lori a close friend. Harper, too, really. It was the first time in her career she’d had personal relationships with her co-workers, whatever their rank. There was a special bond between them and Jess valued it greatly.
Harper turned the case board around. The board stood on wheeled legs, which allowed their ongoing work to be hidden by simply turning it around. Since the SPU office consisted of only one large room there was no privacy for interviewing family members or potential expert witnesses. The moveable case board made discretion possible.
As Jess surveyed the timeline her detectives had built, she was stunned. When had they found the time to do all this?
“We worked on this most of the night.” Lori gestured to the timeline. “We believe, based on your mother’s journal, that the trouble began when you were approximately three years old. The journal entries before that time are more carefree and routine.”
Jess braced her hands on the desk on either side of her. From the day a photo of her father had been discovered at the Brownfield’s body farm, she and her sister Lily had started to question all that they remembered about their shared childhood. Accusations made by Amanda Brownfield that their father had been some sort of murderer had haunted Jess’s dreams for two weeks. The problem was she couldn’t trust anything Amanda said. Though some truth was sprinkled amid the lies, there was no way to be certain what was truth and what was fiction.
Then Reverend Gordon Henshaw had been murdered just six days ago. Since then they had discovered the reverend had started his own abrupt and frantic search for the truth surrounding the deaths of Jess’s parents. His confusing notes and the pages of her mother’s journal painted a startling picture of the final years of Lee and Helen Harris’s lives. Although Lori had made Jess a copy of the pages, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to read them just yet. She’d had far too many other things going on. Then again, maybe that was nothing but an excuse.
Did she really want to know the whole truth?
“Using the system I developed for lifting hidden messages from the reverend’s notes,” Harper began, “we believe that your father was lured into some sort of service. Possibly for the United States government.”
Hayes got up from his desk and moved closer to the board. He surveyed the copies of the pages they’d found in the reverend’s rented hotel room. The reverend had basically disappeared two months ago when he started dissecting the journal. He’d hidden himself in a downtown hotel room. Jess had few memories of the man who had served as the minister in the small Irondale church her family had attended eons ago. She deeply regretted the fear and suffering he had no doubt experienced at the hands of one of Spears’s followers.
“Have you queried the various Alabama law enforcement agencies?” Hayes looked to Lori and then to Harper.
“We didn’t want to take that step without discussing it with you first,” Harper explained before sending a questioning look at Jess.
The lieutenant turned to her. “I’d like to look into that aspect of the investigation, with your permission, of course.”
The look that passed between Lori and Harper was easy to read. They were not happy that Hayes was horning in on their territory. So maybe things weren’t going any more smoothly.
“Please do, Lieutenant,” Jess encouraged. She glanced at Lori, and then Harper. “We’re a team. I’m sure we’d all appreciate your efforts.”
Properly chastised, Lori turned her attention back to the timeline they had created. “Something happened in Jackson County when you were approximately five years old. That’s when your father started spending time there, but we haven’t been able to nail down any sort of case that might have been conducted at state or federal level. Whatever Lee Harris was working on, it was either personal or top secret, whether legal or not.”
“You’re saying his involvement with the Brownfield family was limited to a shorter period of time than we thought?” Jess wasn’t sure how Lori could be making that conclusion.
“One passage refers to the summer their innocence died,” Harper pointed to one of the pages. “We believe that’s the timeframe Lee was tasked to become involved with the Brownfields. We can’t say at what point he became intimately involved with Amanda’s mother, but we think it happened that summer. His involvement on some level may have continued from that point until his death.”
“Wait.” Jess tried to recall Amanda’s birthday. “Amanda was born in March the year I turned four.”
“March twenty-ninth,” Lori confirmed.
Jess nodded. “The timeline is correct.” They just had no idea if her father’s involvement with the family started long before Amanda was conceived or if the affair was sudd
en and short. It remained unclear if his connection to the family or to the case was long term or on again off again.
Harper directed everyone’s attention to yet another page on the timeline. “This page tells us Helen,” Harper cleared his throat, “your mother often had no idea where he would be or for how long.”
Jess frowned. “How would she know about the Brownfields then?”
“Maybe your father told her,” Lori suggested. “Wanda Newsom insists that Helen warned her to stay away because of the bad people when you were about seven.”
Wanda was Helen’s sister. Jess had scarcely seen her aunt since she and Lil were taken from her home just a year after their parents’ deaths. Wanda hadn’t been able to straighten her life out even to care for her dead sister’s children.
“I believe something catastrophic happened with the Brownfield case,” Harper said. “Something deeply personal to your family that caused them to have to look over their shoulders for the remainder of their lives.”
Jess couldn’t hold back her anger. “It’s called infidelity, Sergeant. My father screwed around with Margaret Brownfield and got her pregnant.” The anger faded instantly and hurt took its place.
Lori looked from the endless pages on the case board to Jess. “You know, I find it strange that your mother would seem so worried about the man who’d cheated on her and fathered a child with another woman. If he brought all this down on them, she had to be angry with him. Those passages must be missing.”
Everyone in the room was looking at Jess, waiting for her to respond. “I know I would have been mad as hell.” She walked to the board and studied the highlighted lines from the pages. “You make an excellent point, those passages have to be missing.”
Jess could just imagine the fear and uncertainty her mother faced on hers and Lily’s behalf. With Spears still out there, Jess wrapped her arms around her middle, she was terrified for the child she carried. A mother’s need to protect her child was instinctive and fierce. A woman with two daughters would have wanted to protect them above all else, wouldn’t she?
“When we find the music box,” Harper moved closer to her and pointed to the photo of the key discovered in the dead reverend’s mouth, “maybe we’ll find some answers.”
Jess nodded since emotion had once again stolen her ability to speak. Being pregnant made her more emotional than usual. How was she supposed to maintain any perspective with the investigation into whether or not her parents were murdered?
“The music box is the key,” Hayes said, almost to himself.
Managing to hold back the tears and further embarrassment, Jess agreed, “You’re both right. The music box is the key. When we find it, we’ll have some answers.” Jess stared at the photo of the key that presumably unlocked the music box. “The question is how did Spears come to have possession of it? Assuming he does.”
Wanda couldn’t remember what happened to the music box. She’d sold most of their parents’ belongings to support her bad habits. Jess wanted to hate her for what she’d done, or to continue pretending the woman didn’t exist as she’d done for the past twenty years. Somehow, she couldn’t do either.
“My money’s on the reverend,” Lori said. “He knew where the box was and Spears followed him to it.”
Jess so looked forward to the opportunity of putting a bullet in that bastard’s head. “If it wasn’t in the hotel room with the reverend, then where?” The chapel where he’d been murdered had been searched top to bottom. His home had been searched as a secondary crime scene. “We should check the chapel and his home again. The church in Irondale, too. Just to be certain.”
“What about your childhood home?” Hayes said.
He and Jess had been there yesterday. “We’ve searched that place several times already.”
“One more time won’t hurt,” Hayes countered.
“Why not? Harper, you and Detective Wells take the reverend’s home and Lieutenant Hayes and I will go back to the Irondale house.”
Seemed like a good plan since the Argyle house was swarming with Gant’s people. First, though, Jess had a stop to make.
Mott Street Residence, 3:00 p.m.
Maddie Brownfield was immensely happy to see Jess. The little girl’s reaction had Jess fighting those damned tears again. They sat on the blanket in the backyard and discussed the new doll Jess had brought her.
“Her hair’s like mine.” Maddie played with the doll’s long blond curls.
“It sure is.” Jess grinned. “And she has brown eyes just like you, too.”
Maddie reached up and touched Jess’s hair and then her cheek next to her eye. “You got ‘em, too.”
Jess nodded. “That’s right.” It was time to take a small move toward permanence with Maddie. Lily was taking the steps to adopt her and Jess was thrilled to hear it. She’d considered the same. Dan had agreed to support whatever decision she made. Lily had urged them both to allow her to adopt Maddie. Lily’s two kids were off in college now. She and Blake had the house all to themselves, and as a nurse Lily was fully equipped to handle whatever special needs Maddie might have presently or in the future. That was the part that swayed Jess’s decision. A psychopathic serial killer had raised Maddie, there was no way to know all the terrible things she’d experienced in her young life. She would need plenty of attention in addition to proper counseling. Lily wanted to take on that challenge. She’d reminded Jess that she and Dan were having their first child, they both had stressful jobs, making her the better candidate to be Maddie’s new mom.
“I’ve been thinking, Maddie.” The little girl stared up at Jess with those Harris brown eyes. “I’d like you to call me Aunt Jess. Would you like that?”
Maddie smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Can I come live with you?”
Jess’s heart ached for the child. “How about when I get moved into my new house you come stay with me sometimes? We can sleep in sleeping bags in a tent in the backyard. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Maddie nodded again. “Can ‘Manda come?”
Jess stilled. This was the first time Maddie had asked about her mother. The counselor had discussed Amanda’s death with Maddie. Had the little girl not understood that her mother was dead?
“Who do you mean?” Jess asked, keeping her tone light.
Maddie held up the doll. “My dollie. She’s named af’er my mommy. Mommy’s an angel now.”
“What a nice way to remember your mom.” Jess smiled. “Of course, she can come. We wouldn’t want to leave her out.”
“Can Wilwee come?”
Jess laughed. “Do you mean my sister Lily?”
Maddie nodded again, her eyes sparkling. The child really liked Lily.
“Lily can definitely come. We’ll have lots of fun.”
Maddie jumped up and danced around the yard, holding her doll in the air as if she were flying. There were so many awful things about her mother that Maddie didn’t understand. Was it better to keep those horrors a secret or to eventually tell the little girl? Jess knew quite well what the shrinks and the medical journals would say. Maddie would need to face the past one day.
But not today.
5
Parkridge Drive, Homewood, 7:30 p.m.
Lori Wells grabbed another beer from the fridge for Buddy. Chet had invited him over for pizza and to talk about the off-the-record investigation the three of them were undertaking to get the lowdown on Jess’s father.
“To Chief Burnett.” Chet held up his bottle of Bud Light.
Buddy accepted a cold bottle from Lori and tapped it against Chet’s. “Hear, hear. He did me a hell of a favor.”
“I’ll bet Black was shocked to see Frank Teller strut in there to represent you.” Lori grabbed another slice of meat lover’s deep-dish pie.
“Damn straight.” Buddy laughed. “By the time Frank got through, the DA was all too ready to drop the bribery charges as well as the tampering with evidence charge. Apparently, Black’s evidence was way too weak.”
>
“You still a person of interest in the Amanda Brownfield case?” Chet bit off a hunk of pizza.
Buddy nodded. “I got no problem with that. Hell, I was the last one to see her before she escaped. I gave ‘em permission to check my cell phone records. I’m confident they’ll find I was nowhere near that hospital when she walked.” He reached for the last slice of pizza.
Lori dabbed her lips with a napkin. “We found zip at the reverend’s house.”
“Maybe you’re looking too hard.” Buddy took a swig of beer. “I figured out a long time ago that when you want to hide something, you hide it some place so obvious no one will bother to look. They’re too busy searching for some hard to find spot.”
Lori had to admit his reasoning made sense. “We’ll keep that in mind next time we examine a scene for evidence.”
“You spend as much time dealing with the strange and eccentric like I do and you figure out they go about things pretty simply. They bank on the smart folks overlooking the easy.”
“You never thought about coming back to the department?” Chet leaned back in his chair and studied Buddy. “Or did you screw over too many people to have a second chance?”
Lori grimaced. She’d wondered when Chet would get around to confronting Buddy about his partner. She’d kind of hoped it wouldn’t happen, that maybe Chet had put it behind him. Guess not.
Buddy sat his empty beer bottle on the table. “I like you, Harper, so let’s clear the air once and for all.”
