No Unturned Stone
Page 18
Eve gives me a look, but she’s smiling. “We’ll get him, Rem,” she says. “By the way, why did you want me to pull the DNA off the Delany case?”
I stare at her, a coil tightening around my chest.
The Delany case?
Eve is snapping on her gloves. “Although, admittedly, I realized we didn’t pull DNA the first time, so it’s a good thing. I’m running the match through the CODIS database just to see if we get a hit on Fitzgerald.”
Oh, right. Lauren Delany. The working girl killed outside Sonny’s bar. She had a twenty in her pocket. Did I identify her as a Jackson murder? The first go-round, she was just an unlucky girl who’d been picked up by the wrong John.
Until now, that John was unnamed. But now, it’s Leo Fitzgerald. The name is a recent acquisition to my memory, and it takes me just a moment to nail it. Leo Fitzgerald, the lead suspect in the Jackson murders. Former military, bomb-maker, and the man whose explosive ambush killed John Booker.
He’s been in the wind for three years.
He’s been the primary suspect since his DNA was found on his dead girlfriend, strangled, sexually assaulted and marked with the first of the Jackson bills. But that doesn’t happen for two more years…or rather two years after Lauren Delany’s case.
So what was I thinking?
Eve starts down the hill toward the activity, but I can’t help myself. “Hey—how’s your mom?”
She looked up at me. “She’s good, Rem, thanks. But you just saw her two days ago at my Dad’s memorial party.” She is frowning.
The Danny Mulligan annual birthday party, the precinct-wide bash Bets has every year to celebrate her husband’s life, even in death. So, I’m still invited to that? “Right. Yes, I just…I don’t know.” Two days ago, she lay bleeding in the sidewalk of Eve’s childhood home. Catch up, Rem!
I need an assistant, one of those people who reminds me where I am, and why. But the right words form in my soul. “It’s just been a long time since Danny’s death, and I…you just don’t get over losing someone you love, right?”
She gives me a smile, and it’s sweet. “Sometimes, Rem, you remind me of a guy I used to know.” She winks then and heads down the hill.
I can’t breathe.
It was real. What we had. I saw it flash in her eyes—me, holding her in my arms, her smiling up at me a second before she kisses me.
It was real.
So, then…I think my heart is seizing. I need to sit down—
“Boss, we found some clothes.” The words from Zeke shake me out of the spiral of despair and back to the investigation. “It looks like a t-shirt.”
Zeke is young, maybe mid-twenties, with a man-bun and built like a guy who works out after hours. He sort of reminds me of me, back when I lived for this job. He’s wearing a pair of dress pants, an untucked striped shirt, his sleeves rolled up, and purple evidence gloves. I really don’t know much about him, but I like him. He’s eager. And right now, he’s the closest thing to a friend that I have, so I’m on him like Velcro.
Someone needs to point me in the right direction.
Zeke is directing one of the CSIs to take a picture of the evidence he’s pointing to.
I take a breath, give one glance back at Eve, walk over and crouch next to him as he holds up the underbrush around the shirt. “What, the killer tosses this away as he’s fleeing?”
“Or maybe during the crime, and he didn’t have the time to find it?”
Zeke holds the shirt up. “Pillsbury Diner. It’s a place just across the street. Great burgers, live music.”
I know the place, and the thought sends a strange heat through me. A conversation is forming in the back of my head. I can’t quite make it out, but I will, give me, ahem, time. “Turn it over.”
Again, I’m not sure why, but something in my gut just knows…
He turns the shirt over.
Aw…shoot.
A footprint.
I know I’m cheating, because I remember now a victim from a different time, laying in a hospital bed…“It happened so fast. I was coming out of work at Pillsbury’s and I heard someone behind me. I started running, and he tackled me. He put his foot on my back and held me down…
I’m scrabbling for her name, but it’s buried under layers of other memories.
“I wonder how she got here.” Zeke says.
“He surprised her after work, as she was coming out into the parking lot.” It’s not a hunch—I’m remembering my bedside conversation with the victim. Her name…her name. It’s lodged in the back of my brain.
But deep inside, I’m hoping that I’m wrong. That this woman is not the blonde I met in the hospital, the youngest daughter of a couple from the suburbs. “She probably ran, and he caught up to her.” I gesture to the footprint. “He held her down.”
“We’ll get this tread into the database and see what we can find.” Zeke says. He bags the evidence.
I walk over to the edge of the yellow tape, duck under it and hike down to the crime scene. Eve is looking at the body, the strangulation marks at her neck, the evidence of assault. She picks up her hands. “She chews her nails. Nothing to grab skin,” she says. “And the DNA might be washed away. It looks like her body might have been pushed into the water, then pulled out.”
Her hair is wet and muddy, her lower lip gray, split. My memory flashes, but it’s too brief to capture.
“I found her purse!” Zeke shouts. He’s standing near a park bench. Eve follows me as we hike up the hill. We wait for the photographer, then I glove up as Eve picks up the purse. It’s small, the kind that a woman wears over her shoulder, to her hip. What does Eve call that—a clutch?
“It’s a cross-body bag,” Eve says as she opens it. “So it’s funny that it would have fallen off. Unless she was surprised, and it fell off her shoulder as she ran.” She pulls out a small wallet.
I hold my breath. Because I remember now. Hollie Larue. Age twenty-three. Pretty, despite the black eye, the split lip. Two younger siblings. Her voice is soft, shaky in my head. He told me not to scream…
Eve opens the wallet. Tucked inside is her driver’s license.
I look away, to the river flowing downstream, past the stone bridge, into the horizon where time is beginning a new day.
And, as she reads the name, I brace myself.
“Her name is Hollie Larue.”
Yep.
This death is on me.
Meet David James Warren
Susan May Warren is the USA Today bestselling, Christy and RITA award–winning author of more than eighty novels whose compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. The mother of four grown children, and married to her real-life hero for over 30 years, she loves travelling and telling stories about life, adventure and faith.
For exciting updates on her new releases, previous books, and more, visit her website at www.susanmaywarren.com.
James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He’s the best-selling, Christy Hall of Fame author of ten novels and loves to send readers on mind-bending journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s dad to the two most outstanding sons on the planet and lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in eastern Washington.
More at http://jameslrubart.com/
David Curtis Warren is making his literary debut in these novels, and he’s never been more excited. He looks forward to creating more riveting stories with Susie and Jim, as well as on his own. He’s grateful for his co-writers, family, and faith, buoying him during the pandemic of 2020-21, and this writing and publishing process.
grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share