by Debra Webb
Lori drew down her sunglasses and surveyed his car. “That Charger could use a good wash, Corlew.”
It was dusty as hell. Made Jess think of gravel roads like the one that led to the creek they’d visited yesterday. Had he been tracking her movements? Fishing for a lead? If he thought following her around would make her want to be on his team he could forget it. And she damned sure wasn’t allowing him to join hers.
She had no problem with his help on a case, but she wasn’t dealing with any hidden agendas, and Corlew had a huge agenda. He was not going to draw her into this grudge match he had going with Dan and the BPD.
He grinned at Lori. “I’ve got two sweet little college girls who take care of that for me every Sunday afternoon. Gives ’em a chance to work on their tans while picking up a few extra bucks.”
“If they’re doing anything more than washing your car,” Lori reminded him, “it’s probably illegal.”
He laughed. “Why don’t you come on over this Sunday and you can see for yourself. I can always use another set of good hands.”
Jess rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Corlew?”
“Your boy rang me up at seven this morning wanting to discuss my work on this case.”
Good for Harper. He and Cook were interviewing all the cops—the ones still alive, anyway—who’d worked the Man in the Moon investigation. “Why aren’t you talking to Harper instead of horning into my business?”
She glanced beyond the glass to see if the old man she presumed to be Mr. Atkins was anywhere in sight. What in the world was he doing? Maybe he was senile as well as ornery. Or maybe he’d had to take a pee and that was taking awhile.
“I owe you an apology, Jess.”
Now that got her attention. “I’m afraid to ask what for?”
“I wasn’t completely honest with you.” Corlew dragged his sunglasses from his face and shifted them around to the back of his neck.
She hated when guys did that. Especially guys over forty. “What’s new? I’ve known you better than twenty-five years. I’d be worried if you suddenly started telling me the truth.”
“I misfiled those reports on my interviews with the meter readers from Alabama Power. I was pissed at Black, so I thought I’d give him something to worry about if he ever had a reason to pull that cold case.”
Her instincts went on alert. What was he up to? “You understand that what you’re telling me is a criminal offense. I could arrest you right now.” Except she had other more important stuff to do.
He held his hands out as if he were ready to be cuffed. “Do what you think you have to. I want to make amends. Whatever it takes.”
What a load of BS. The nerve of this man! Getting even was one thing, but playing with innocent people’s lives was something else altogether. No wonder Dan fired him. “Is there anything I need to know in those reports from the meter reader interviews?”
He wagged his head, dropped his hands to his sides. “Like I said, Black was right about that. The only thing that was even a gnat’s ass off was the guy Bullock. Jerry Bullock. He seemed a little antsy when I talked to him. Like maybe he was worried about getting fired.”
Jess had picked up on Bullock’s anxiousness, too. Funny that he’d be nervous all these years later. “What about the one who got fired the next year, Roger Fowler?”
Corlew frowned in concentration before an oh-yeah expression dawned. “He was off in Cancun when the little Myers girl went missing. He and the woman he was having the affair with apparently sold off jewelry that had belonged to her husband’s mother to pay for the trip. When her husband found out, she blamed it on Fowler, said he stole the jewelry.”
“I appreciate the confession, Corlew, but I’m a little busy just now.” Jess hitched her head toward the Charger. “We’ll talk about this later. Have a nice day.” She peered through the glass to see if the old man was coming yet. No sign of him. Damn. “Detective Wells, why don’t—”
A blast rent the air.
“Gunshot!” Jess warned even as both Lori and Corlew shouted the same.
Jess hunkered down next to the Mustang and pulled her Glock from her bag. Lori dropped between the Mustang and the Charger, weapon in hand and calling into dispatch the code for shots fired.
Corlew, his own weapon drawn, had flattened against the brick building rather than hit the ground. The sound had come from inside. As far as Jess knew there was no one inside except the old man.
Corlew signaled that he was going around back. Jess gave him a nod.
The second uniform from the cruiser, crouched down low, moved up behind her.
Jess leaned to one side in an attempt to see through the doors. No visible movement. Doors still secured.
“Stay down, ma’am,” the officers said. “Back up is en route.”
Jess ignored him.
An SUV pulled into the parking slot next to the Charger. A man climbed out and looked from the police cruiser to Jess and Lori and then to the front entrance of the store.
“Get down, sir,” Jess ordered. “Someone inside fired a weapon.” She wasn’t waiting any longer. There hadn’t been any more gunshots. “I’m going in,” she said to Lori.
As if her words had just sunk in, the man from the SUV rushed for the front entrance. “My father’s in there!”
“Chief Harris!” the uniform shouted as she lunged forward, blocking the man’s path.
Jess couldn’t have this guy rushing inside until they determined exactly what had happened in there.
Lori shoved the new arrival against the wall. “Stay back, sir.”
“Mr. Atkins, do you have a key for this door?”
He nodded. Jess held out her hand. Worry in his eyes and hand shaking, he passed her the keys.
“Let me go in,” Lori offered.
Corlew would be at the back entrance by now. Wouldn’t matter if it was locked. He had learned the art of breaking and entering as a freshman in high school. Just another reason he’d ended up in the military. He’d probably scared the fire out of the officer she’d sent back there to watch the rear entrance.
“You,” Jess said to the young officer next to her, “come with me.”
“Chief,” Lori argued.
Jess cut her off with a look.
She hugged the wall and eased toward the front entrance. She peered past the glass. Didn’t see a thing. Watching for movement inside, she shoved the key into the lock and gave it a twist. Corlew appeared just as she was shoving the door open. Once she and the uniform were inside, she closed and locked the door. Until they had assessed the situation no one else was getting in.
“What’ve we got?” she asked Corlew.
“I’ve got your other uniform maintaining the rear perimeter,” he explained. “Building’s clear. Old man, sixty-five, seventy maybe. Single gunshot to the head. I called it in, backup and a bus are on the way, but he’s a goner. Most of the back of his head is decorating the wall.”
“You shouldn’t be in here.” She tugged on a pair of gloves from her bag. “I want a list of anything you misfiled, misplaced, or whatever on my desk ASAP.”
He nodded. “I won’t let you down this time, Jess.”
“We’ll see about that. Now go,” she ordered.
Remarkably, he didn’t argue. He gave her a two-fingered salute and got out of her way.
She dragged on a pair of shoe covers and ensured the uniform with her, Officer Mitchell, did as well. Corlew had said the old man was beyond help and that the building was clear, but she opted to check for herself. With Mitchell trailing her, she walked the scene. Sure enough, the old guy was done for.
The second of two offices and the larger warehouse fronted by the much smaller retail space were clear. The blare of sirens sounded closer as she returned to the office where the old man had ended his life. A .38 lay on the floor next to his chair where it had fallen after he’d fired that single shot. Blood and brain matter had sprayed over the wall and blinds of the window behind his desk.
/> “Maybe Coleman was onto something,” Jess said to herself. Behind her Mitchell gagged.
She whipped around to order him out of the room but he was already rushing away, hand over his mouth, jaws bulging.
Once backup was on the scene and the area was secured, Jess escorted the younger Atkins to the picnic table at the rear of the building. She sent the officer around to see about his partner Mitchell. There were official vehicles everywhere. Evidence techs had arrived. Someone from the coroner’s office was en route. It was a cluster.
“Mr. Atkins, I’m going to have Detective Wells here read you your rights.”
He blinked as if he wasn’t sure what was happening. He’d figured out his father was dead before Jess could relay the bad news.
“It’s standard procedure,” she assured him. “We don’t want to violate your rights in any way.”
He nodded and then listened as Lori recited those rights.
When he indicated that he understood, Jess asked, “Would you like an attorney, sir?”
“No. I don’t need one.”
Jess sat down on the opposite side of the timeworn picnic table. “Sir, we came here this morning to talk to your father about—”
“I know why you’re here,” he said, defeat in his voice. “That’s why he did this. He knew why you were here, too.” Atkins shook his head. “It shouldn’t have ended this way. I told him we’d get a good lawyer, but I guess he figured there was no point.”
Surprise and anticipation sending her heart into a faster rhythm, Jess looked to Lori, who appeared just as startled as she was. “Sir, why do you believe we’re here?”
“He made a mistake,” Atkins fairly shouted. “He was a good man.” His voice fell with the last.
More of that heady anticipation pounded in Jess’s veins. She couldn’t put words in his mouth but she needed him to get to the point. “What kind of mistake did he make, Mr. Atkins?”
“It was a long time ago. Thirty years…”
Her heart all but stopped beating. Jesus Christ… could BPD have overlooked this lead all those years ago and missed the Man in the Moon? Not that she could fault anyone—hell, she’d overlooked it, too, until Gina Coleman brought it up. The distance these guys were working from the actual crime scenes had made them irrelevant.
“He underwired that whole subdivision.” Atkins dropped his head. “It was the only way to keep costs down. He and his brothers were just starting out and they were desperate. My father never did anything like that again. I swear.” He stared at Jess, his eyes pleading with her to believe him. “It was his one mistake in a lifetime of hard work. He had no idea that everything would turn around right after that and business would take off. But it was too late to fix what was done and no one was ever the wiser. Then the fire happened.”
“Fire?” Jess prompted. Clearly he wasn’t talking about missing children.
“Two months ago there was a fire in that subdivision. An elderly couple died. Dad got the call yesterday that our company and the work he did there was being investigated.”
“You feel he believed we were here to arrest him?” Oh hell. This had nothing to do with her case.
“What else would he think?” He dropped his head into his hands and started to sob. “I should’ve seen this coming.”
Jess didn’t bother questioning him further. The dead man inside wasn’t involved with the Man in the Moon case. She left the younger Mr. Atkins be and joined Lori a few feet away. “Contact someone for him, please. Wife, someone.”
“Will do.” Lori reached for her cell.
Jess needed to walk off some of this frustration. She should have eaten this morning; she felt weak and shaky. The dead, no matter their condition, rarely did that to her. Maybe she’d go around and sit for a minute in the Mustang.
The puker, Mitchell, was in the BPD cruiser, head down in shame. Poor guy.
Her cell clanged. Probably Dan checking to see if she was okay. Sure hadn’t taken long for him to hear about this. One of the uniforms had likely reported to him immediately.
Not Dan. Harper.
If he was calling to tell her about Corlew he was a little late.
“What’s up?”
“Ma’am, I just got a call from dispatch. We have a missing child, eight-year-old female. Cook and I are en route to the residence now.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach and she swayed. “Where?” Just uttering that solitary word seemed to shred her throat as if she’d swallowed glass.
Harper provided a Hoover address.
“We’re on our way, Sergeant.” She dropped her phone in her bag and turned to the officer waiting near the cruiser and Mitchell. “Officer Woodson, let Detective Wells know we have a call.” He stared at Jess as if he didn’t understand. “We have to go. Tell her I’m waiting in the car.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
She watched him rush around the corner of the building. To be that young again. God, she felt old today.
A horn blew and she jumped. She surveyed the street. No traffic on the street. She scanned the official vehicles gathered in front of the crime scene. Who had blown the horn? Confused, she checked both directions again, then assessed the parking lot across the four-lane street.
A single vehicle sat there. The man inside waved at her.
“What the…?”
Black. Infiniti.
“Son of a bitch.” Fury whipped through Jess.
She withdrew her weapon where he could see it and started walking his way. At the last second she remembered to check the street to her left for traffic. Clear.
The driver with his dark hair and sunglasses just sat there, revving the engine, daring her to either shoot or to get in his face and demand answers.
“You’re pretty cocky sitting all the way over there, aren’t you?”
He grinned, pointed his forefinger at her and pretended to shoot.
Outrage blasted her again. “Mother fu—”
A horn blew. The wind from a passing panel truck almost knocked her off her feet.
She stumbled back. Another horn blasted… this one behind her.
“Shit.” She dragged in a breath and blinked. She turned her attention back to the parking lot and the Infiniti was gone.
Standing there in the middle of the traffic that seemed to have come out of nowhere, Jess struggled to catch her breath. What the hell had she been thinking? The guy had baited her and she’d been so fixated on getting to him that she’d almost gotten herself killed.
Carefully checking all lanes before moving, she hurried across the street and into the lot where he’d been parked.
He was long gone.
“How in the world?” He’d disappeared in scarcely more than a blink.
The alley. Beyond the hardware store on this side of the street was an alley just like the one behind the Atkins Electric shop. He’d escaped that way.
Jess turned around to see Lori waiting on the other side of the street.
Oh hell. “This is not going to go well.”
Paying extra close attention this time, Jess crossed the street once more.
She couldn’t recall having seen Lori angry—at least not at her. At the moment she looked beyond furious.
“That truck almost hit you,” she bellowed. “What the hell were you doing?”
“He was there.” Jess exhaled a big breath. “The guy who left the flowers. The one who took a bead on me that day on the exit ramp. It was him. He’s following me. Taunting me.”
“Let’s go. Harper’s waiting.” Lori stormed over to her Mustang but not before giving the poor guy Jess had sent to get her the evil eye and warning, “See what happens when you take your eyes off her?”
Feeling like a total idiot, Jess climbed into the Mustang.
“I was wrong to go off half-cocked like that,” she admitted. She had no explanation, at least not one she wanted to own, for why her brain had gone completely AWOL. “I got angry and then I got stupid.”
“You did,” Lori agreed as she pointed the Mustang toward Hoover.
Silence lingered, and whether it was the idea of her irrational behavior or the reality that Lori had witnessed it, Jess suddenly wanted to cry. The guy in the Infiniti had accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do. What Spears had told him to do. She’d fallen for his baiting hook, line, and sinker. With no regard for her safety or anyone else’s. Her hand went to her belly. God, she felt so stupid and frustrated and tired.
“Just don’t do it again.” Lori sent her a look that promised there would be serious consequences if she did.
Jess blinked at the ridiculous tears stinging her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
In a few days, when this case was solved and her period had shown up, they would have a woman-to-woman talk about why she’d allowed her emotions to get the better of her back there.
First things first, though. She had to find the monster who’d taken yet another little girl. The harvest moon was still weeks away. He’d upped his timeline.
That was never a good sign.
110 Boxwood Drive, Hoover, 10:00 a.m.
The neighborhood was an old one, with the houses a little farther apart than the newer, more compact ones builders pushed these days. The woods and a ravine at the rear of the properties separated the homes from the interstate. The constant hum of traffic, all hours of the day and night, was one Jess suspected she would never get used to.
City life came with noise, but there was noise and there was noise. Interstate traffic was noise.
She sat on the sofa in the modest living room and waited for the mother, Tammy Higginbotham, to compose herself. She’d insisted she was ready to talk to Jess, but then she’d fallen apart as soon as the first question was posed.
This was the part Jess hated most, but she needed to get all she could before shock set in and stole the devastated mother’s ability to recall the little details that might make all the difference. When Tammy lifted her tear-stained face to Jess and cleared her throat, she attempted a response. “I kissed her good night about eight thirty.” She made a keening sound that sliced right through Jess’s heart. “Her daddy had already read her a bedtime story.” She tried to smile but failed. “We do that every night.”
