Biloxi Sunrise (The Biloxi Series Book 1)

by Jerri Ledford

  “We’ll talk soon.” Jack stepped toward the door. He just wanted to hug her. To do anything that would make her feel better. Or maybe it was to make him feel better.

  “Whatever.” Lisa closed the interior door cutting him off before he could pull the screen door open. He heard the lock snick into place.

  That had certainly gone well.

  TWELVE

  Kate walked into the pit still feeling groggy from a lack of sleep. She’d spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, thinking about Jack. She understood that everything happening with Leslie and Lisa had him on edge, but the anger and violence she’d seen in Jack when he was beating Tim was something she’d never witnessed before. Nor had she ever imagined he was capable of that kind of loss of control.

  She stopped at the coffee pot and filled the mug she carried in with her. If she had any hope of making it through the day she would need as much caffeine as possible.

  “You’re early.”

  Kate jumped and spun around. Hot coffee sloshed out of her cup and down the front of her pants. She groaned as the hot liquid soaked through the material and scalded her skin.

  “Jack. What are you doing here?”

  “Long story. You don’t look happy to see me.” He filled his own mug while Kate tried to soak some of the moisture out of her pants with a handful of paper towels.

  “I’d be happy to see you if you didn’t scare me and make me spill coffee all over myself first thing in the morning.” Heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks. What was it about him that made her feel like a school girl with a secret crush when she wasn’t prepared to see him? “I didn’t expect you to be here so early.”

  “You usually drag in here later than me, Kate. So I could ask you the same thing.”

  Together they walked to the corner of the pit where their desks were pushed together facing each other. Technically, the pit was a wide-open squad room that housed more than two dozen desks. Some were pushed together like Jack’s and Kate’s, others stood alone. Occupants ranged from other detectives to sergeants and even administrative workers.

  “What are you doing here so early?” Jack settled into his chair. The questioning look on his face made Kate look away.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She dropped into her own chair and focused on her computer screen. “There was no sense hanging around an empty house, if I could be here doing something productive.” Truthfully, the empty house was the only place she wanted to be less than she wanted to be at the office.

  “You never answered me though.” Kate shifted her gaze back to Jack. “What are you doing here so early?” And why are you avoiding the question? She didn’t ask the second question out loud, but she did want to know.

  “I had another—”

  “Roe. Giveans.” The voice that bellowed across the pit came from the desk sergeant. His real name was Chris Hardin, but everyone called him Turtle because he was round, with a thick neck, and he moved with slow and deliberate steps like he had to concentrate on each one.

  “You’re up. We got another homicide. Over at Broadwater Marina.” Turtle’s voice droned as if he were perpetually bored with his own very existence.

  Almost as a single movement Kate and Jack pushed away from their desks and strode toward the door behind the desk sergeant while he filled them in on additional details. Details that sounded a lot like what they’d reviewed on the Patricia Simms case a couple of days ago.

  *~*~*

  Kate sat in the passenger’s seat waiting for him to offer up the answer that he’d started to give at the station. The first few minutes of the drive south were quiet.

  When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to volunteer the information, she pushed.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Jack sniped back at her.

  “What were you about tell me before Turtle interrupted?”

  “Oh.” Jack swung the car onto Highway 90.

  Kate tapped her fingers on her thighs as she gazed out the window at the passing cars and buildings.

  “I spent the majority of the night camped out on Leslie’s street watching her house.” The way Jack replied, it was as if he spent his nights hanging around Leslie’s neighborhood all the time.

  Kate snapped her head toward Jack and focused an intense stare on his profile. Surely he wasn’t looking for trouble.

  “Why?”

  “Leslie called me.” Jack focused on the road, watching traffic far more intently than he usually did.

  Kate bit back frustration. She’d never really felt like Jack was holding back from telling her anything before. He had his quiet moments, but he usually answered any direct question she asked. Until this mess with Leslie and Lisa started. Now getting him to talk was like unearthing a tree stump. It required lots of digging.

  “Again, why?” She fought to keep the frustration from her voice.

  Jack paid particular attention to a red light.

  Kate’s frustration bubbled over to anger. What was going on? Kate opened her mouth to demand that he explain his strange behavior but two words formed in her mind and she snapped her lips shut.

  He knows.

  Did he know about her past? That she had frozen up? That in that critical moment when bullets rained down around her, she couldn’t force herself to shoot back?

  They were kids. Gang members caught in a drug bust, and armed with semi-automatic weapons. But still kids. And somewhere in her mind, Kate thought she could reason with them if they would only stop shooting.

  Ryan hadn’t been so jaded. Her partner knew those kids couldn’t be reasoned with. He fired back.

  “Kate! Cover me!” Ryan hadn’t waited for her to respond. He’d trusted her with his life. He rushed out into the open, trying to get closer so his shots would be more accurate.

  But even as Ryan was taking fire, Kate couldn’t shoot back. Ryan had been hit six times.

  He died, eyes filled with disappointment and focused on her where she was frozen in place.

  Kate had let Ryan die. She’d caused his death, because she froze. And every night since then she’d seen Ryan’s face in her dreams. The disappointment in his eyes a nightly reminder that she had failed him.

  And now Jack knew. Kate blinked back tears that blurred the passing cars.

  “If you weren’t planning on listening, why did you ask?” The edge in Jack’s tone brought Kate out of her thoughts.

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, clearing away the threads of the nightmare and fear that Jack would learn how she’d failed. “I do want to hear. I just got distracted because I’m tired. What did you say?”

  “I said someone was prank calling Leslie last night. I went over there because there was no patrol available. But I saw someone sneaking around her house.” Jack’s words came through clenched teeth as he stared straight ahead. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, arms rigid.

  He didn’t know.

  So she had a little more time. Eventually he would find out, but she hoped eventually was a long time from now.

  “Oh. Did you see who it was?” The sun glinted off the Gulf of Mexico. The beach was nearly deserted today.

  Jack told her how he’d gone to confront the lurker, but tripped and fell. He also told her about his exchange with Lisa after he scared the culprit away.

  “I don’t like putting her off. I want to talk to her, to warn her to be careful and to make her see how this whole relationship with Tim won’t end well for her, but…” Emotion ratcheted Jack’s features tight.

  “But what?” Kate’s voice was barely more than a whisper. She felt Jack wanted to tell her something. In that moment, watching a quick succession of pain, fear, and anger turn his solid features fluid and pull his brow down into a scowl, Kate wished she could have more with Jack than just a work partnership. She wanted to share more of Jack’s life and to give him more of her own. That realization startled her. They couldn’t have more.

  That would mean telling Jack about her
past. About Ryan and the mistakes she had made. Kate knew if she did that, Jack would never be able to trust her, with his life or his heart.

  “But she won’t listen to me. She has no reason to listen to me.” A mask fell into place over Jack’s face. His features became stone again, all traces of emotion gone.

  What wasn’t he sharing with her?

  “All kids her age think they know everything. I know I did. My poor parents earned every one of their gray hairs worrying about me.” As a teenager, Kate had been more than a little wild. She was always angry and always assumed her parents didn’t understand. Her own actions forced her parents to be harsh, unlikeable people. She’d snuck out as often as she could, just to get away.

  Wait a minute…

  “Jack, how was Lisa dressed this morning?”

  Jack looked at Kate, his eyebrows inching toward his hairline. “Like a kid going to school. Well, actually, more like a kid going to a nightclub.” Kate watched understanding bloom on his face.

  “You think she was sneaking out?”

  “More like sneaking back in, Jack. She’d probably been out all night long.”

  “All I saw was a shadow. Not even enough to really tell what the person looked like. It could have been her.”

  Jack turned the car into the Broadwater Marina. Time to go to work. Maybe they could pick this conversation up later.

  Maybe I’ll talk him into going to dinner with me tonight.

  THIRTEEN

  The first thing Jack noticed as he and Kate approached the knot of crime scene techs waiting for their turn on the scene was the stench. The acrid smell wafted on the morning breeze, a combination of sour and rotten that not even the sickly sweet smell of southern privet hedges could have disguised.

  “Whew!” Jack automatically shielded his nose, though nothing would keep that odor from burning his nostrils, even several yards away. And worse, he would still smell it hours from now when this scene was cleaned up and he’d moved on to something else.

  “Yeah. Good morning, huh?” Kate pulled a small tin of eucalyptus salve from her pocket. On the first scene they’d worked together, she’d told him that a veteran homicide detective had taught her to put a little dab into each nostril at scenes like this to keep the smell from overwhelming them. She offered the tin up to Jack.

  “Nope.” He waved it away. The salve would mask the smell of the scene, but he would become accustomed to it soon enough. Until then, the assault on his senses might give him details he would miss if he couldn’t smell them.

  He’d had this conversation with Kate numerous times. Different types of death had different smells. If a person had been poisoned, the poison might create a distinct odor that could make the body have a different scent than if the person had been shot or died of natural causes. But Kate had a weak stomach. If she didn’t mask the stench, she wouldn’t be of any use at all, and nothing Jack said to her would change that fact.

  By the smell, Jack was certain the body was at least a couple days old. Tissue decomposes at different rates based on various factors, but it usually took a body a little time to ripen as much as this one had, even in the heat.

  Jack and Kate broke through the crowd and Jack’s assumption proved correct. The body he saw was swollen and showed obvious signs of exposure and animal scavenging.

  “What have you found so far?” He addressed the ME’s assistant, who leaned over the body, inspecting something either right on the surface, or right beside the body.

  “Female. Multiple stab wounds. Looks like she’s been here for two or three days, based on the amount of insect activity I see. I was just looking at this nice little critter right here.” He held up what looked to Jack like a hunch-backed fly. He dropped it into a plastic vial and twisted the lid shut. “It’s called a Coffin Fly. They’re scavengers, not unlike their cousins the common housefly.”

  “Nice.” Jack could care less about the bugs that called corpses dinner. “You sure about that time frame?”

  “You know I can’t be completely certain until I run some tests.” Another bug, this one looked like a beetle. Another plastic vial. “First impressions, Jack. That’s all you get till I have time to work my magic.”

  “Is this where she was killed?” The ME’s assistant wouldn’t give concrete details unless he was certain, but that didn’t stop Jack from asking questions.

  “Most likely. There are significant amounts of blood under and around the body. And there’s no indication that the body has been moved.” The ME’s assistant finished catching bugs and waved Jack and Kate over to join him.

  “She’s been lying on these stairs since her death.” He pointed to a pool of blood the color of walnut-stained wood. “The blood is dried everywhere it was exposed to the sun. In this humidity that probably took thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”

  September in Mississippi was like living in an oven. But it’s humid, so it’s not the dry heat that you might feel coming out of an oven. Instead, the humidity seems to get into everything and make it sticky and moist. That could increase the time it took for the blood to dry.

  Jack studied the body. Unlike Patricia Simms, this woman was small. He guessed her height to be just over five feet. She had light hair, cut short, and her clothes, though now in tatters, would have been designer styles before they were cut to shreds. The only factor that resembled what he’d seen of Patricia Simms’s body was the number of stab wounds. He didn’t even try to count them.

  “Why did no one notice her before now?” Kate had been quiet, walking around the scene in the area that had been cordoned off with crime scene tape. All Jack could see when she spoke was her neck and head. The floor of what had been the Broadwater Yacht Club was built nearly five feet above the concrete walkway Kate now stood on.

  “She’s pretty far down into this stairwell.” The body lay about halfway down a concrete stairwell that once led from the Yacht Club to the concrete walkway. Hurricane Katrina had washed away all but the concrete structures, a few well-protected wooden piers, and the floor of the yacht club more than five years ago.

  The ME’s assistant pointed to a collection of evidence bags in a blue plastic tub like the kind that are used to hold drinks and ice at backyard barbecues. “She was also partially covered with a blanket and other debris. We’ve already bagged it to go back to the lab.” He grunted as he and another crime scene technician lifted the body and placed it carefully into a black, plastic body transport bag.

  “She probably looked like a homeless person, taking a nap.” He straightened, hands on the small of his back and stretched. “I’m getting too old for this.”

  In fact, he was a young man. Maybe not even forty. He didn’t even have gray hair. But Jack, who passed forty a couple years back, understood. Some days it felt like his body was just going to stop working.

  Jack walked around the concrete pad that was once the floor of the main building. Ornate stonework graced the Gulf side of the pad. A bank of windows used to be there. In the center, a nautical symbol set in blue and gold stone had been painted over with spray paint.

  The original design had featured an eight-pointed star with a seahorse on one half of the middle circle and half of a sunburst on the other. The whole design was surrounded by a circle of gold marble.

  Now, the original design was just a faint impression behind a black and red spray-painted symbol that belonged to the alternative band that had caused havoc on the coast the night before. A black eight-pointed star with a red, stylized ‘J’ in the center of it. The party couldn’t have been over for more than a few hours.

  Jack looked toward the west. He could see the dome of the Biloxi Coast Coliseum. The place where the band had played was less than a mile from where he stood.

  “Did you get this?” Jack asked the photographer who now stood on the lower concrete walk snapping pictures of the stairwell from which the victim had just been removed.

  “Yep.” He nodded. “And you should come take a look at this.” He
pointed his camera at something in the stairwell that Jack couldn’t see.

  Jack jumped down to the walkway and Kate joined him as he approached the photographer.

  Jack stopped beside the photographer and saw what interested the man. Graffiti. In red and black spray paint. Another symbol—just like the one he’d been looking at—and several initials were painted on the stairs and the walls of the stairwell.

  “Any idea what this might be?” The photographer pointed at a series of letters, painted in red with black outlines. They didn’t spell anything. Just random letters. And they were all positioned under where the body had lain.

  “No clue.” Jack and Kate said in unison. The gang unit might be able to shed some light on it.

  “I’ll call Vic,” Kate said, as if she’d read Jack’s mind. “But these were done before the woman was killed. There’s blood on top of the painting.”

  “Hey, was there any paint on the body?” Jack called out to the ME’s assistant.

  “None that I’ve seen, but—”

  “I’ll let you know after I get her to the lab,” Jack and Kate both mocked the ME’s assistant.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, but glared at Kate.

  To Jack he said, “There could be paint on the clothing or under the blood, but until I can examine it closely, I can’t say for sure.”

  Frustration skittered across Kate’s features and Jack wondered for the thousandth time why she hadn’t asserted herself with the other people she worked with. She sure had no problem being assertive with him. But she let everyone else treat her like she was still a newbie although she’d been with the department long enough for other newbies to come along.

  “There is one thing I can say for sure.” The ME’s assistant turned back to face Jack. “Whoever did this? They were angry. As in serious overkill angry. I counted at least twenty stab wounds. And it’s likely there are more than those.”