Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  It was the feeling that this was what they were going to get.

  What appeared to be a random crime on a lonely stretch of road, the only reason behind it being stealing a man’s truck.

  They had that rain that likely washed away evidence and time was not on their side.

  Unless the person who did it felt compelled to walk into his station and make a confession, Hix had the very bad feeling that nothing was going to break in this case. He had four people on it all day, five when Bets came back to them, a forensics team, a coroner who’d already done his autopsy, and they didn’t have a single lead. They had no crime scene, no shell casings, no witnesses, one bullet, a dump site and a victim that it would seem no one had one single reason to want dead.

  “Somethin’ll break, Hix,” Lance repeated into Hix’s thoughts, doing it more firmly this time, and Hix focused on him again.

  “We’ll work to that,” Hix told him.

  “Know you will. Now like you said to your deputy, it’s been a long day. Go home. Face this head on tomorrow,” Lance replied.

  Hix gave him a nod, a low wave, and murmured, “Thanks, Lance.”

  Lance nodded back.

  Hix went out to his Ram, drove it to the station, parked it next to his Bronco and went in.

  Ida was in dispatch.

  He greeted her by lifting a hand and flicking out two fingers before he went right back to his office.

  He’d ordered all his deputies home for a good night’s sleep so the place was deserted, lights on in his office as he’d left them, the rest of the lights were out, outside the ones they always left on over reception.

  He sat at his desk, opened the file on it and spread out the photos Hal had printed out.

  He looked them over. He looked them over again. He studied each one from corner to corner. Then he stood up, bent over them, unfocused his gaze and stared at them all at once.

  Nothing jumped out at him.

  They were just photos of a man, clothes and hair wet, face down, head turned to his left, right arm cocked and up, left arm caught under him, both legs arranged haphazardly like he’d fallen, put a hand out to stop his fall, but hit his head and went unconscious.

  But he hadn’t fallen and he wasn’t unconscious.

  He’d been tossed and he was dead.

  Maybe the person carrying him had Nat Calloway’s right wrist held by his hand, which was why it was flung out.

  He couldn’t know unless he had the man who did it in front of him to ask.

  And if he had that man, that wouldn’t be a question he’d ask.

  “Know pictures like that tell stories to men like you,” Ida said quietly from the door, and Hix lifted his gaze to her. “But you been in here an hour, Hix, so I reckon, they aren’t talkin’, maybe you need to give them some time, look at ’em in the morning, and maybe they’ll be ready to tell their tale.”

  “That’s my hope, Ida, but my concern is they wanna keep their secrets and I gotta find some way to pull them loose.”

  “Maybe you should do it when you don’t look like you’ve been hit by a truck,” she suggested.

  More good advice from Ida.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  She tipped her head toward the bullpen. “Gotta get back.”

  “Before you go,” he called as she made her start to turn. “Town talking?”

  She nodded. “Word’s definitely out. Shock. Whispers. Sadness, even if they don’t know the family. We’re not used to this here in Glossop. Terra from the Guide called, twice. Me and Reva been puttin’ her off. Blatt came and went this afternoon. Said he’d catch you later.”

  The editor of the paper and the ex-sheriff sniffing around was not a surprise and town talk was unavoidable.

  Even so.

  “We gotta do our best to keep gossip contained,” he told her. “They can and will talk, but my team needs to be free to do the work they gotta do, not deal with people flipping out. Nothing indicates this is anything but random. Nothing fitting this MO has happened anywhere in the state. What we know right now, we got a one-time deal and we gotta figure out who did it. That’s all.”

  “I’ll do my part in that, Hix, that’s a promise,” she assured.

  She would. You didn’t work dispatch that included suicide and sexual assault hotlines, which meant the training to do all of that, without having a head on your shoulders.

  “Let you get back to it,” Hix replied. “And I’ll say my goodnight now.”

  “Right. ’Night, Hix. Try to get some rest.”

  He doubted that would happen.

  He still gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  She went back to her desk. He shut down and headed out to his Bronco.

  He needed answers.

  He needed bourbon.

  But as he drove, what he gave himself was not heading to his apartment.

  He headed to Greta’s house.

  It was after nine at night, but as he pulled up to the curb in front, he saw she wasn’t inside, watching TV or painting her nails or shit like that. She was sitting on her porch, the porch light on, and she had a laptop in her lap.

  She also had her eyes on the Bronco.

  She shifted them to Hix as he rounded the hood, made his way up her walk, the steps to her house, her porch, and as he moved to stand in front of the wicker chair beside her.

  But once he’d stopped, her eyes dropped to the chair and then came back up to him.

  He took her invitation and rested his weight in the chair, slouching right into it because he didn’t have the energy to do otherwise, aiming his gaze to the quiet street.

  “You need a beer, darlin’?” she asked quietly.

  “You got bourbon?” he asked the street.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say anything else but he didn’t need to.

  He heard her setting her laptop to the side and he saw her walk across his line of vision as she went into the house.

  He stared at the street and then lifted both hands, rubbing them over his face.

  Damn.

  He was tired.

  He had his arms resting on the arms of the chair when she came back out.

  He lifted one hand to take the healthy dose of bourbon she held in front of him.

  He took his gaze from the street to see she had a big, stylishly-shaped wineglass in her hand filled with red wine and she was folding herself in the chair next to him, legs crossed under her.

  As he was noting, this seemed like pure Greta. Courtesy so ingrained, she wasn’t even going to make him drink alone.

  Once she’d settled, her attention came right to him.

  “Faith is one of my clients,” she said softly.

  “Right,” he muttered.

  “So, I’ve seen some cop shows, and my guess is you can’t talk about it,” she noted, still giving him the soft.

  “No, Greta, I can’t talk about it.”

  “Don’t need to, baby,” she whispered. “Written all over you that you’ve had the definition of a really, really bad day.”

  “Yeah, sweetheart,” he confirmed. “I’ve had a really, really bad day.”

  She leaned toward him, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around his biceps, giving them a comforting squeeze before she let him go and sat back.

  When she moved away from him, abruptly, he announced, “Told you I didn’t wanna move from Indy.”

  “Yeah, you told me that,” she replied.

  “This is a good place to raise kids,” he shared.

  “I can totally see that.”

  “Man like me, the job I do, though, it doesn’t offer much.”

  She twisted in her seat so she was faced more his way, kept her gaze on him, all this telling him she was listening.

  “I don’t want crime. No one wants crime,” he stated.

  “No,” she said. “No one wants that.”

  “But this is what I do. It’s what I know. It’s what I wanted to do since I was a kid.”<
br />
  She nodded encouragingly.

  “And here, it didn’t feel like I was doin’ much to help. Not anybody. Not anything that was worthwhile. ’Cause I gotta admit, I don’t really give a shit who graffitied the Mortimers’ barn. They aren’t gang tags. Those two make a habit outta pissin’ people off. They’re mean as snakes. Hell, coupla months ago, Louella shot her neighbor’s dog when he got loose and made his way on their land.”

  “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  “Dog survived,” he told her. “But the vet bills were astronomical. They refused to pay ’em. Nothin’ I could do about that. Their land. They got chickens. That coop is more fortified than Fort Knox and the dog was nowhere near it when she shot it, but she defends herself by sayin’ she’s defendin’ part of their livelihood by discharging a firearm, I got no recourse. But that’s who they are, and you’re like that people in these parts aren’t gonna feel a lot of kindness for you. What they’re gonna do is maybe get up the nerve to piss you off right back by spray painting unflattering stick figures of you on the side of your barn while you’re away for the weekend.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she murmured.

  “But that’s my job in these parts,” he told her. “Finding who did it and takin’ it as far as the Mortimers use the law to make me take it, which with those two will be as far as the law will allow me to go.”

  “Hix,” she whispered, but said no more.

  So Hix kept right on talking.

  “Felt now for years that I was irrelevant. Experience I had. Skills I got. And my job is about bein’ up in some man’s face for spendin’ too much time with his bottle of Jim Beam and not enough keepin’ track of his cows.”

  “You’re not irrelevant.”

  “No. And now a man’s dead and his five-year-old son is probably not gonna remember him much when he grows older and it’s been made clear in the ugliest of ways that I’d sure as fuck rather be talkin’ to owners of stores across the county about spray paint purchases. I’m also a dick for not seein’ that as relevant, no matter I don’t like the citizens I’m doin’ it for.”

  “You’re not a dick either, Hixon.”

  Hix looked to the street and did it belting back half the healthy dose of bourbon she’d poured for him. The burn made the muscles in his jaw bulge out as he gritted his teeth to fight it. But not long after, the warmth hit his chest and gut and it was worth it.

  “You didn’t will Faith’s husband to get murdered because you were bored, darlin’,” she said carefully.

  Hix’s only response was to throw back the rest of the bourbon.

  “How can I help?” she asked.

  “You’re doin’ it, lettin’ me sit with you and bitch.”

  She let that sink in then she offered, “Can I get you more bourbon?”

  “Gotta drive home, Greta, so no.”

  “You don’t have to drive home.”

  He turned his head to her again.

  “This,” he started, lifting his empty glass to indicate the two of them on her porch, “is about a friend comin’ to a friend after a shitty day. It isn’t about me showin’ at your place to bury that day in something sweet.”

  She smiled at him. It was small, sad, sympathetic, but entirely genuine.

  “Okay. Though . . . uh, the ‘something sweet’ remark totally bought you that option if you want it open to you.”

  He couldn’t believe it after the day he’d had, but what she said made his lips tip up.

  “Good to know,” he muttered.

  “You can think on that over another glass of bourbon,” she returned.

  He looked at her a couple of beats then he looked to his glass.

  He didn’t answer her before she slipped the glass out of his hand and she was again walking in front of him to get into the house, this time carrying her closed laptop with her.

  She was back, he had another healthy dose of bourbon in his hand and she was settled in beside him, sipping wine, when he asked, “What were you doing on your laptop?”

  She glanced over his shoulder into her front window like she could see it from there and then back at him.

  “Trolling eBay and discount designer sites for new cocktail dresses.” She shot him a big grin. “I have a guest room closet full of them, due to my history.” She lifted up her hand, thumb and forefinger half an inch apart before dropping it, all the while talking. “And I’ll admit the barest hint of an addiction to pretty, shiny dresses. That said, I haven’t bought one in a while and I figured it was time to treat myself.”

  “You find anything you like?”

  “Seven hundred anythings. I should say, more precisely, when you showed, what I was doing on my laptop was narrowing that down.”

  He tipped his lips up at her again before he looked to the street and threw back more bourbon.

  “Sorry I didn’t call today,” he said to the shadowy quiet beyond her porch.

  “Word travels fast, Hix,” she replied, back to soft and gentle. “I got it.”

  “Not thinkin’ I can take you to lunch anytime soon.”

  “I get that too,” she told him. “But, just sayin’, I’m on my porch practically every night. Like the quiet. It’s restful. Sets me up for a good night’s sleep. So, seein’ as my porch doesn’t have a door, it’s safe to say it’s open for you anytime you wanna share it with me. That said, even if I’m in the house, my door is open to you, even if first I gotta unlock it after you ring the bell.”

  Hix looked to her again and his tone laid testimony to the truth of his, “Means a lot, sweetheart.”

  She nodded.

  He lifted his glass and again shifted his attention to the sleepy street before he took another drink.

  He felt her attention drift from him and they sat in the quiet for a while, both of them putting back bourbon or wine.

  After some time, she asked, “You get any food in you today?”

  He hadn’t.

  “Not hungry.”

  “I bet,” she whispered, then offered, “I can make you a sandwich or something.”

  Nat Calloway’s last meal was a sandwich.

  “Think I’m good,” he declined.

  She kept at it.

  “You wanna go in? Relax in front of a movie?”

  He looked to her. “Thanks, babe, but no.”

  Her face grew soft as her gaze grew concerned. “Is there anything I can turn your mind to to help you take it off your day?”

  “Probably not.”

  The concern deepened. “You gonna be able to sleep?”

  “Probably not,” he repeated.

  She studied him for a few beats before a playful smile hit her face. “Just guessing on this, but seeing as you’ve been busy, you probably haven’t bought any condoms.”

  That shocked a short bark of laughter from him and he shook his head through it, answering, “That guess would be right.”

  “Damn,” she whispered, still smiling at him.

  He twisted his torso in the chair and leaned into the arm toward her. “Again, Greta, I’m not here for that, and just to say, me wanting to have lunch with you is about communicating that to you too. It’s safe to say I like what we’ve shared in a big way but I’m not here to get that from you and that’s not all I want from you. It hasn’t swung my way to find a time to prove that to you so I’m takin’ that time now. I’ll finish my bourbon. I figure you won’t share wide I had two before I got in my car, unimpaired, mind you, and drove the five-minute drive home. But that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  “I want you to stay,” she blurted.

  He stared into her eyes.

  She leaned into him too. “I want you to stay, Hixon. I want to be with you, but more, I don’t want you to be alone. Not after today. Not with what you’ve gotta face tomorrow. I heard you and I appreciate what you’ve said. But there’s not much I can do to help you out except look after you. So how about you let me do that.”

  “Baby,” he murmured.

  She said n
o more and didn’t wait for him to say anything.

  She unfolded from her chair, got up, transferred her wineglass from her right hand to her left and came in front of him. She bent to him, wrapped her fingers around his free hand resting on the arm of the chair and she gave it a tug.

  He resisted.

  She tugged harder, her eyes locked to his.

  Hix quit resisting.

  When they were both standing and doing it close, she tipped her head back and whispered, “Let’s go to bed.”

  Looking in her beautiful face, hers filled with soft concern but also traces of anticipation, Hix didn’t bother attempting more resistance.

  He followed her into her house, watched her turn off the porch light and locked her front door himself.

  Naked, his back to her headboard, his knees cocked, up and opened wide, his fingers gentle in her hair, Hix watched Greta suck him off.

  He could come just watching how deeply she got off sucking his cock.

  But she was seriously good at it. Lots of suction, lips tight, excellent use of tongue.

  But no woman could do that forever, unfortunately. So when he started to rock up, meeting her movements, his fingers going from gentle to twist in her hair, and the noises she was forcing out of him came faster and got lower, she drew him out.

  She wrapped her hand tight around him and came up to her knees between his legs, bracing herself in a hand beside him on the bed, her face close to his, his hand still in her hair as she started jacking.

  “Good?” she whispered.

  Good?

  Not quite.

  Great?

  Absolutely.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, staring in her eyes.

  She stared back, then her gaze started wandering his face, and in a voice that sounded like half a whimper, half a moan, she said, “God, you’re so damned handsome.”

  He took his hand from her hair, wrapped it around hers pumping his cock, lifted his other one to curl it around the back of her neck to hold her right there, and he tightened their grip on his dick, quickening their movements.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, beginning to thrust up into their hands.

  She tipped her chin down to look at him and when she again gave him her gaze, he felt as well as saw through the dark around them it had gone from hot to fiery.