by Paris Morgan
“No, don’t apologize for being who you are. It’s refreshing to have someone be upfront and honest. Speaking of that, do you have any children I should be worried about showing up at a future time?” He reached across the table to take my hand and stroke it.
“No, I don’t. Not yet. I kind of knew that it was something I might want to do at a later date. How about you?” I threw the ball back into his court.
Most people our age had been in some kind of serious relationship before, and it was best to know what you were looking at if you were going to get serious.
“No children that I know of at least. I had a girlfriend in high school that I thought was going to be the one, but things went a little differently than I’d planned. She was killed in a car crash, and I just haven’t had anyone that fit right since then.” He shrugged in acceptance of life’s problems.
“I’m sorry.” I gripped his hand in sympathy. “I’ve never lost anyone that was really close to me before, and it would be difficult to get over, I’m sure.”
We sat in silence, holding hands. I kind of liked that about this guy. He didn’t seem to have a ton of expectations floating around.
“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen at a crime scene?”
“One time, we were called to a scene because of a disturbance. This guy was running down the street chasing a dog in his underwear. The dog had gone in while they were doing it and taken his pants outside through the doggy door. When he went outside to catch the dog, he ducked under the fence through a hole and took off down the street with the guy’s pants. He was only visiting the house and didn’t have anything else to wear.” I grinned at the memory of several officers trying to block in the dog holding a pair of pants in his teeth while growling at us.
“Your turn. Craziest research question.”
“Oh, how to tame the shrew.” He motioned with his hands. “True story. I had to tell the guy that there was no exact method, and that he should avoid trying to tame anyone.”
As we swapped horror stories, I began to relax and let my guard down a little bit. Enough that when we walked outside, I realized that he was glancing at his phone instead of heading to his vehicle.
“Didn’t you drive here?” I questioned curiously. I rarely used a hired car because I’d pulled too many of them over on a regular basis to trust their driving.
“No, I don’t do a lot driving since I don’t have an office that I have to go to. I prefer not to have the extra expense since I travel a lot, and have to get transportation when I’m somewhere else,” he explained.
“I can’t imagine not having a vehicle. I’m not sure if that’s because I like to be in control of my surroundings, or just that where I grew up was more rural and we didn’t have taxis or other car services. You had to have a car or truck to get around.”
Boldly, I looped my arm through his, pulling him toward my car. “Unless you live somewhere really crazy, I’ll drive you home.”
“Oh, um, I wasn’t expecting that. Sure, I live about ten minutes from here.”
He gave me his address, and I knew the general area it was in. “Get in,” I commanded.
“You sure are bossy.” He grinned. “It’s a good thing,” he hastened to assure me.
“Right. Does that mean you’re willing to go out with me again?” I headed down the street toward his house.
He rubbed his hand over his chin in a contemplative gesture, and I wondered if he’d had a beard, but shaved it recently.
“The jury was out until you offered to drive me home. Now, I’m going to say yes. Any date that is willing to make sure you get home safely is worth a second one. This is me up here on the left with the light on the side of the garage.” He pointed to a quaint little house that had a cottage feel to it. “I guess this is where I leave your wonderful company.”
I have no idea what came over me, but I leaned over to kiss him, and he met me halfway there.
He brought his hand up behind my head, pulling me closer as we deepened the kiss.
Whoa! That was amazing. Talk about sparks. I’d bet that Ryan couldn’t kiss like that. His name running across my brain might have been the reason that I allowed Jerome to hit first base without stopping him.
I moaned as the car’s center console got in my way. I pulled back, putting a hand between us. “I don’t want this to be a one-night stand, so let’s press pause and get a few more dates under our belts first.”
“Doesn’t breakfast this morning count as the first date and dinner as the second?” His fingers trailed up my arm, causing me to shiver.
Before I could answer, my phone went off, and it was my emergency ringtone.
“I guess I’ll have to take a rain check. If you’re free tomorrow night, we could go to my favorite Mexican food restaurant. Just text me and I’ll send you the address.”
He leaned in and brushed my lips with his. “Laters.”
I answered the phone as he got out. “Boxe…wait, what happened? I’ll be right there.”
This would be a good way to see how Jerome handled being interrupted, but he hadn’t seemed to mind. Maybe this dating app thing had some merit to it.
***
Ten minutes later, I arrived at the hospital and stopped at the desk for directions. I had to produce my badge and sign in before they would give me any information, but I made it into the emergency room only minutes before Joe arrived.
“What have we got?” he huffed, out of breath from the long walk from the parking lot and through the winding hallways.
“They’ve got the victim in surgery, but the husband who found her is in the E.R. waiting room. I haven’t introduced myself yet.”
“Ah, do we have a name?”
“Yeah.” I opened the notepad in my phone. “Sarah Black. The husband’s name is Ron.”
Approaching the waiting room, I glanced around it, wondering how hard it would be to find the husband, but it was obvious Ron was the man pacing the room, wringing his hands anxiously.
“Ron Black?” I asked as we maneuvered past several people that were waiting to see a doctor.
“Yes.” He stopped pacing. “How is Sarah? Is she going to be okay?”
“We don’t know. The nurse said she was in surgery. Can you tell us what happened?” I guided him toward a few empty chairs in the corner.
“She got off early for her birthday and said that she was going to pamper herself, but that she’d be ready to go out for dinner when I got home.” He sank into one of the chairs and put his head between his hands. “I stopped at a florist to get her flowers, and when I drove up, a guy was walking away from the front of the house. So instead of going in the back door like I normally would, I went to the front door. It was open slightly, and Sarah’s foot was blocking it from closing.”
Wiping a tear away, he continued. “I looked at the flowers in my hand, and there beside her was another set of orchids. I can’t believe my first thought when I saw them was that she must have had a lover there and he left. I mean, she was lying on floor, and that’s when I noticed that she was bleeding. Her head was bashed in and I called 9-1-1. They said she was alive for the moment, but would need surgery.” He started to sob.
We waited for him to compose himself again, but it wasn’t until I pushed a box of tissues at him that he seemed to realize that we were still there.
“Mr. Black, I know this is a really delicate situation. Do you think that it was your wife’s lover that did this to her? Could he have been a delivery man?”
“Honestly, I would never have thought she could do this kind of thing.” He sniffled and blew his nose into the Kleenex. “Even if he was the delivery guy, who else would be sending her flowers?”
“Her family isn’t the type to do something like send flowers to her on her birthday?” Joe pushed him a little further.
“No, they don’t have money to spend on things like that, and I don’t think they even know what kind of flowers she likes.” He looked confused. “This just
makes no sense.”
“We’ll do our best to find out what happened. We’re going to go over to your house and look around to see if we can find anything that might shed some light on the situation.” Joe patted his knee and got up.
“Sure, whatever helps. I don’t even know if I locked the door. I just got in my car and followed the ambulance here.” He looked down at his clothes that were covered in his wife’s blood.
“Since we have to come back here, is there anything that you’d like me to pick up for you? We’ll make sure that your home is secure when we leave,” Joe offered.
“Maybe another set of clothes. That’s very kind of you.”
“Not at all,” Joe assured him, not mentioning that we’d need those clothes for evidence.
“Is there family that you need to call?” I asked as an afterthought before we left him sitting there, awaiting the outcome of her surgery by himself.
“No. Once I know something, I’ll call them. I couldn’t handle having her family here asking questions that I have no idea how to answer.” He looked like he might break down again, so I left him sitting there forlornly.
“He doesn’t seem like someone who would hurt his wife. Are we thinking this is connected to our other cases?” I followed Joe, and didn’t even protest about riding in his car.
“Yep. I’ll bring him some clothes and we’ll take those into evidence, but I don’t think he had anything to do with it. He just happened to be there in time to save her life. When he’s had a chance to calm down, we might be able to get a description of the person he saw leaving his house.”
“If we find a card with the flowers, it’ll bring the attacks to eight people.” I suddenly felt weary that we were fighting an uphill battle.
“Yeah, but this one is still alive,” Joe injected positively.
“For the moment,” I retorted without optimism.
***
Over an hour later, with nothing to show that Sarah was having an affair or company in her home to cause the attack, we arrived back at the hospital with the clean clothes for Ron, and Joe followed after him to put them straight into evidence. They had barely come out of the restroom when the doctor returned.
Ron looked up at him hopefully, but the doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, there was nothing we could do. She’s gone.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he commented calmly, before bursting into tears.
“Is there a room we could use for a few minutes?” I asked the doctor, suddenly weary.
“This way.” He led us to a small room with only a few chairs.
The door hadn’t even closed behind us when the doctor started explaining. “Look, when we started the surgery, it was a small chance that we were going to be able repair the damage to her head. If she hadn’t come in when she did, there’s no way she’d have lived much longer. The blow to her head basically damaged her skull, and even if we had been able to retrieve the fragments, she would have been brain dead.”
Ron’s sobbing lessened. “So you’re telling me that I’ve just sat here for over two hours and let you play around in her brain when you knew there wasn’t anything that you could have done to save her when you started?”
Thoroughly pissed off now, his tear-streaked face a testament to the horror he’d been through, Ron poked a finger in the doctor’s chest. “Why did you give me hope that she might make it? Why not just say, ‘I don’t think there’s much we can do’ before you took her into surgery?”
The doctor edged toward the door, away from Ron’s wrath. “I’m truly sorry, and I hope they can catch the one who did this to her and you.” With that statement, he slipped out of the room.
“Ron, we looked around the entire inside of your home. It showed no signs of someone having had sex in the last few hours. She had taken a shower because the towel was damp in the bathroom, and all of the normal things were out on the counter after she got ready for her night out with you.” I knew it wouldn’t bring her back, but I wanted to ease his pain just a little bit. “Is there someone you can call?”
“I’ll take a cab over to her parents and tell them in person. I’m sure they’ll let me stay there since I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep in our home ever again.” Rob swiped at his face in a futile attempt to remove the fact that he had been crying.
“We’ll check in with you in the morning to see how things are going, and if you or the neighbors remember anything once you’ve had some rest.”
It seemed so horrible to leave him alone after something like this, but we had to go to the station and fill out our reports before we forgot something important.
Nothing was standing out in a way that gave us a clue as to who or what these senseless killings were accomplishing.
“Joe, do you get the feeling that this guy was interrupted? Like he didn’t expect the husband home quite so soon?” I sat across from him at the desk, drinking another cup of coffee to keep my brain awake.
“Yeah. He didn’t plan for the husband to find her alive, that’s for sure. Although, the way he’s killing them isn’t leaving much chance for survival. I don’t want to see you back here before 9 a.m.,” he admonished me.
“Yes, sir. You don’t have to tell me twice.” I gathered my coat and bag, ready to find my way home and to my bed.
Joe cleared the files off the desk and into a drawer before he joined me, but we were stopped by Nick on the way out. “Hey, the boss wants to see both of you in the morning bright and early to find out what’s been going on with these murders.”
“Thanks for telling us now,” I groaned. “So much for an extra hour of sleep.”
“If these keep going on like this, we’ll be walking zombies, and maybe we’ll just stumble into the killer.” Joe commiserated with me as we reached our vehicles.
“See you in a few. I’ll be the person walking around with a caffeine IV to keep me going.”
I made the trip home on autopilot, somewhat glad that I had turned Jerome down and didn’t have anyone with expectations waiting for me.
Chapter 5
The alarm sounded way too early and loud, but after years on patrol, I was able to roll out of bed and into the shower.
I hadn’t even walked into the station when my phone rang, signaling another murder.
When I got to the scene, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t connected to our other cases. Two people had been arguing, and it had escalated into one of them being dead while the other was wounded.
It was a simple matter of taking statements, pictures of the crime scene, and arresting the spouse who’d been taken to the hospital. We’d placed her under arrest and would let her lawyer decide if it was self-defense since her husband wasn’t there to give his side of the story. From the doctor’s reports about her medical files, this wasn’t the first time she’d been to the hospital with injuries, but that wasn’t for us to decide.
Having been up late, it was a relief to have something that didn’t need a lot of brain power to deal with and a suspect in custody. Come to think of it, this was the first arrest that we’d made since I’d gotten my new badge. On a normal patrol shift, I might make a few arrests in one day, or only a few for the entire week.
“You know we still have to meet with the boss after lunch, right?” Joe dropped into his desk chair with a thud. “The more we have to do these late nights and early mornings, the more I dream about the days until retirement. Just until the end of the year, which seems like forever at the moment.”
“I’m with you about getting some more sleep, but the fact that we haven’t had a murder today from the birthday killer makes me worried.” I drank the last drop of what was another cup of coffee in an endless amount today.
“What you should be worried about is the first briefing with the boss, and the fact that we have no leads on it yet.”
“Hopefully, he’ll give us some help on it so we can start some interviews of those who aren’t as close to the victims. I still think that N
oah Preston has something to do with Susan’s death. He might even have a hand in the others as well.”
“He’s not known for his generosity. Although, last night’s murder being added to the pile may tip the scales in our favor.”
His phone rang. “Yeah? We’ll be right there.”
“Evidently, lunch is over. There’s been a murder in Ft. Worth, and the boss wants to see us now.” Joe wrapped his partially eaten sandwich up so that he could finish it later.
I hadn’t been to the boss’s office since the first day, which had been to accept a handshake and ‘welcome to homicide’ before being shown to my desk. This visit had a slightly different feel to it.
“Joe, why are there more bodies dropping out there? Can’t you handle this without bringing in Ft. Worth? If this keeps up for even a day or two more, we’re going to have the FBI showing up and sticking their noses into our business. What are you doing to make sure that doesn’t happen?” The boss ripped into Joe with the door open so everyone could hear what was happening.
“My new partner found some very similar characteristics that matched those in Ft. Worth, and we went over to see if we were chasing the same killer. It appears he struck there first and they have no leads, but he chose to move around and now we have him here.”
“Here? In cuffs? Then you don’t have him here.” Boss almost came out of his chair in frustration.
“We have a few leads that we’re working on, but there’s no evidence left behind, and we can’t find a motive. The only thing these murders have in common is that they’re killed on their birthdays by being bludgeoned to death.”
