Hazardous Duty

by Christy Barritt

  “Why?”

  “Trying to search out any evidence they may have missed.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see anything.” His arm darted across the door before I could enter. “You shouldn’t go in there.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s bloody.”

  “I see blood all the time. It’s part of my job.”

  “Yeah, but not in your own apartment.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Sierra piped in from behind. “Don’t argue with her. You’ll never win.”

  “So I’m learning.” He dropped his arm. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Riley and Sierra followed behind as I tiptoed into what used to be home sweet home. Now it just felt like the place I lived; there was nothing sweet about it.

  “Where’s Veronica?” I asked.

  “She went back to her hotel.”

  “She looked pretty shaken.”

  “She’ll be okay.” His hand covered my shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  I couldn’t turn to look at him. He’d see the truth in my eyes. “I’m sure.”

  As the kitchen came into view, I stopped in my tracks. Red blood pooled the floor, fingerprint dust was everywhere, a patch of my rug had been cut out.

  I drew in a shaky breath and pointed to the corner where the pedestal of the cake dish stood, stale muffins atop it. “That’s where he cornered me. He started to reach for me when I grabbed the glass top and swung it over his head. He collapsed in front of me.”

  “The block of knives is on the other side of the kitchen, so someone had to walk past him to grab one,” Riley said.

  “In the process they’d crunch the glass that was scattered all over the floor.”

  “Some might even get caught in their shoe,” Sierra said.

  I held my head higher. “And maybe one of those pieces fell out when the intruder escaped.”

  We began searching the floor for a telltale speck of crystal. While the other two searched inside, I climbed onto the fire escape. The nighttime sky made it hard to see.

  “Riley, toss me the flashlight from my desk drawer.”

  He did as I asked. I twisted the top and a pinpoint of light spotted the wall in front of me. I studied every inch of the escape landing, but there was nothing.

  Maybe I should check the metal stairs.

  I stepped onto the first foothold and the structure started downward with my weight. I held my breath until it slammed into the next landing. Crouching to keep my balance, I examined the first step.

  Nothing.

  Lowering myself down, I flinched. A piece of hair caught in a metal crevice. I jerked back and the strand snapped. Out of curiosity, I shined my light on the spot. There was my short, strawberry blond hair.

  I leaned in closer.

  And there beside it was a long blond strand.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Using a pair of tweezers, I carefully pulled the hair from the fire escape and placed it in a plastic zippered bag.

  Riley squatted in front of me, studying my every move. “I think you’ll make a pretty good forensic specialist one day, Gabby.”

  The first smile I’d felt in days stretched across my face. “Thanks.” I held up the bag. “Let’s get this to the station.”

  “Any ideas who it belongs to?” Sierra asked from the window.

  “Not Candace. Lately, she’s a brunette,” I said, climbing back into my apartment. “Maybe it’s someone we haven’t met yet. There were other women in the picture. I’m just ready to have this finished, once and for all.”

  “Amen,” Riley echoed behind me. He dug into his pockets and pulled out his keys. “Come on. I’m driving. It’s time to put closure to this.”

  Parker wasn’t at the station when I arrived, but a lab tech was. I handed the bag over to the middle-aged Latino, Lela, and explained how I came across it.

  She held up the bag to the light. “If you look at the end, you can see the hair came out at the root. We should be able to get some DNA off of this.” The slender woman glanced up at me. “Where did you say you found this?”

  I told her.

  She shook her head. “We checked all over the apartment. Sometimes another set of eyes will find what we missed.”

  I glanced back at Riley and Sierra, as they chatted by the doors and decided to keep the conversation going. “Do you miss things a lot?”

  “Not a lot. But we’re not God. We can’t see everything. It sounds like you were thorough, though. There isn’t going to be a good, unbroken chain of evidence so this won’t hold up in court. But if we find whom this belongs to, he or she had better have a rock solid alibi for last night. Good job.”

  “Thanks.” I stared at the lab equipment and wanted nothing more to wander around, exploring all of the technology and wonders of science. I wanted to ask Lela questions, to quiz her about her job. I didn’t want to leave the crime lab, I realized.

  My eyes zoned in on the gold cross hanging around Lela’s neck. Could she be a Christian? Could she have found common ground between faith and science?

  She caught me staring and touched her necklace.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, looking away.

  “No need to apologize. Are you a Christian too?”

  “No, I can’t prove there’s a God. I look at Christians and how screwed up they are and it compounds my belief that God is a myth.”

  “Just because God is perfect, doesn’t mean that Christians are. You know that—you are a scientist, right?”

  “As soon as I finish my degree I will be.”

  “Then you realize that the universe is fine-tuned for our existence.” Lela continued to mix solutions together in test tubes as we spoke. “You know that if certain physical properties were even slightly different, we wouldn’t be here. Besides, you don’t really think that a tree is just as significant as you are, do you?”

  The fact was, sometimes I did believe that and the thought depressed me. I shrugged.

  “Don’t confuse life with God, Gabby—or Christians. We make a mess of things because it’s our nature. But you can look at the orderliness of the world and see that someone’s in control.”

  Wasn’t that what Riley had told me at lunch that day? That I was assuming that life was a reflection of God? It was a coincidence that these two people had said the same thing. Or was there really a such thing as coincidences?

  Lela pushed a hair behind her ear. “Let me know if you ever want to chat, okay? About science or God or both.”

  I nodded. “I would like that.”

  Riley appeared behind me and touched my shoulder. “You ready?”

  That was a great question, I realized. On many levels.

  ***

  All night, I tossed and turned on Sierra’s hide-a-bed. The hair kept nagging at me, taunting me. Who could it belong to? Who had I met concerning this case with long blond hair?

  I sat up in bed. Veronica? She had long blond hair. And she had a connection to the campaign. Her father had some tough competition in the election since he was running against Cunningham. But was Veronica a killer?

  No. I shook my head. I left her in the coffeehouse when I ran to my apartment and she was still there when I got back. She couldn’t have killed Cunningham.

  There could be any number of other women who Cunningham had an affair with who had hair like that. I couldn’t ignore that possibility.

  I sank back into the bed again. Which put me back at square one.

  Frustrated, I took a long hot shower. Despite the humidity, I played with my hair, trying to get all the waves out of it by blow drying it straight. I applied make up with care. Anything to waste time.

  I needed to get a change of clothes from my apartment. Sierra still snoozed in bed, I realized, glancing at her bedroom door. Though tempted to wake her and make her keep me company in my blood-splattered apartment, I shook my head. I could handle it by myself.

  Gri
pping my keys with a white-knuckled fist, I forced myself upstairs. I paused by my door. Last night with Riley and Sierra I’d handled it okay, but now I was alone, with no one to distract me from the memory of Cunningham’s desperate eyes and the blood from his wounds. I didn’t want to experience the horror that had taken place in my apartment again. I didn’t need any reminders of the gruesome crime.

  But I did need a clean shirt.

  After drawing a deep breath, I twisted the lock and the door opened. My gaze was drawn to the splatter of red across the kitchen floor. I closed my eyes.

  Michael Cunningham. Murdered. In my apartment.

  I shuddered.

  How had my life turned into such a mess?

  I looked away and saw the light on my answering machine beeping. Keeping my gaze focused, I stepped across the room and hit play.

  “Gabby, it’s your dad. Just wanted to remind you I’ll be home next week. I need to borrow some money. Ernie’s birthday is coming up, and I need to buy something.”

  He always came up with some excuse to buy alcohol. I knew his tricks. And I needed to start making some changes. Dad needed to get help, but he wasn’t going to accept it from me. He would have to hit rock bottom before he realized how dire his situation was.

  Glass crunched beneath my feet as I hurried past the kitchen to my bedroom. I grabbed some clothes from my dresser and started to retreat. A textbook resting on my bookshelf caught my attention. I hadn’t touched it in years.

  Hugging the clothes to my chest, I crossed the room and slid the book from its snug home. It was from one of my forensics classes at college. I ran my hand over its smooth cover and remembered the excitement I’d felt as I’d studied this book.

  I stuck the book on top of my clothes and hurried back to Sierra’s. After I dressed, I sat on the couch and looked over the textbook. I remembered Lela’s words to me last night. I remembered the feel of being in a crime lab.

  Maybe it was time to make some life changes, I realized. But first, I had to ensure I didn’t go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit.

  ***

  An hour later I decided to go visit Harold. It had been a few days since we’d spoken and so much had happened.

  I walk into the jail and went to the front desk. “I’m here to see Harold Morris.”

  The bald man looked over a sheet and shook his head. “He’s out on bail.”

  “He is?”

  “Just released this morning.”

  After thanking the guard, I hurried to my van and drove to Harold’s house. When I pulled up, he was playing with Keisha and Donovan in the front yard. I threw the vehicle into park and ran across the yard to embrace him.

  “How . . . ? When . . . ?” I started, at a loss for words.

  “Riley bailed me out this morning.”

  “He did?” Why hadn’t Riley mentioned this to me? He had obviously known when I spoke with him earlier.

  “He’s been the biggest blessing to me, a real answer to prayer.”

  Riley’s words came back to me. Don’t confused life with God, he’d said. Was that what I was doing? Was I transferring my view of life onto God? Could it be true that God wasn’t harsh and unfair, like life?

  Harold squeezed my arm. “You’re an answer to prayer too, you know.”

  I laughed. “Me? An answer to prayer?” I’d never heard that one before.

  “God’s been using you, Gabby, even if you haven’t realized it.”

  My cheeks flushed. I needed to change the subject before the strange emotion that welled in my gut became evident. I cleared my throat. “So, how are you doing?”

  “Okay. Better now that I can spend some time with my family before my upcoming hearing.”

  “Do you have any idea how that evidence got into your trunk, Harold?”

  He shook his head. “None.”

  “When was the last time you opened it, before the fire?”

  “I went grocery shopping the Saturday evening before we cleaned the house. That’s the last time I remember.”

  “So, sometime between Saturday evening and Monday when you were arrested, someone put it there.”

  “I’ve thought about it over and over as I sat in the jail cell. I just can’t figure it out.”

  “Can I look at your trunk, Harold? Maybe there’s some kind of clue there.”

  “Look all you want.” He tossed me the keys. I popped the trunk open and examined the carpet for anything out of place. A leaf embedded itself in the carpet. Some pine straw. An old jack.

  “Do you have a flashlight?”

  He disappeared inside and returned with one in hand. I examined the crevices, searching for something to give me a clue. The police hadn’t even searched the trunk, I’d bet. They’d found the stolen goods and deemed Harold a criminal.

  If—when—someone else put the loot in Harold’s car, they had to leave something behind. As humans, we left traces of ourselves everywhere, from hair to fingerprints to skin flakes. I’d just read about it in my textbook earlier. With enough patience, I could find something.

  Had someone picked the lock? I studied it, but didn’t see any signs of tampering. They could have gotten hold of his keys somehow. But that seemed too risky.

  I walked around the car and tugged on the doors. They were all unlocked.

  “Do you usually lock these?” I asked.

  “Call me an old fashioned country boy, but no, I don’t.”

  I slid inside the backseat and tugged at the seatbacks. They pulled down to allow for extra luggage room. What if the murderer/arsonist had pulled the seat down, put the items in the trunk, then left the police to do the rest of the work?

  It seemed plausible. And if that was the case, evidence could be in the backseat, too.

  I shined the light on the floor, then in the crevices of the seat. Nothing. I continued to move the beam of light through the car. As I studied the window across from me, I froze. Slowly, I crawled across the car, closer to almost invisible thread stuck in the door.

  Bingo.

  A long blond hair dangled.

  ***

  I dropped off the hair at the station and briefly spoken with Detective Adams. He assured me he was doing everything he could. Back at Sierra’s, I flipped through the pages of my old textbook.

  I closed my eyes and replayed my conversation with Candace. She’d said Cunningham had multiple affairs. I would bet one of those affairs was with a woman with long blond hair.

  Something nagged at me. There was a connection I knew I wasn’t making. I reviewed all of the blonds I’d met in connection with Cunningham. There was the woman at his office, his publicity director. Both seemed like possibilities, but my gut told me not to pursue those leads. There was someone else…

  I snapped the textbook shut. Everything clicked and I could clearly see the big picture. I knew whom the hair belonged to. Now I just had to prove it.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I rushed upstairs and knocked at Riley’s door. Veronica answered, her smile disappearing when she spotted me.

  “I need to talk with Riley. It’s urgent.”

  Her gaze darkened. “We were just packing his things. Can’t it wait until another time?”

  “No, I need to speak with him now.” I pushed past her and into Riley’s apartment. I found him in the kitchen. He paused from packing his pots and pans.

  “Gabby.” A wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.

  “I know who killed the Cunninghams and burned their house down.”

  Riley set the box down and turned toward me. “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Right now I need you to come with me.”

  “Shouldn’t you just tell Parker?”

  “No, I’ve already developed a bad track record with him. You’re Harold’s lawyer. You should be there.”

  He glanced behind me. I felt Veronica standing there.

  “I’ll be right back.” He wiped his hands on a dishcloth and stepped toward the door. “It won
’t take long.”

  “Don’t walk out on me again, Riley.” Veronica pushed past me and caught his arm. “If you leave, I won’t be here when you get back.”

  I cringed at the desperation in her voice. Where was the poised woman from earlier?

  “Veronica, don’t do this.” Riley touched her shoulder, and she jerked back.

  “You’re going to go with her, aren’t you?” she demanded.

  “We’ll talk when I get back, okay? Don’t do anything irrational.”

  I couldn’t believe the temper tantrum Veronica was throwing, or the position she was putting Riley in. I saw the agony on his face.

  “Never mind,” I mumbled. “I can handle it by myself. Sorry to interrupt.”

  I hurried from the apartment to my van. The last thing I wanted was to ruin a relationship. Riley and Veronica were a perfect pair. They should be together, living out their ultra-successful lives.

  I’d thought Riley and I had a lot in common, but obviously not. He wasn’t the simple, down-to-earth neighbor I thought him to be. He deserved someone like Veronica.

  I pulled into traffic and wove my way around town until I reached James O’Connor’s house. I expected the building to be extravagant, like his ex-wife’s. Instead, I found a simple brick ranch.

  Before I lost my courage, I rang the doorbell. A man with a full-beard and bald head answered. Not the kind of man I pictured Barbara with.

  “James?”

  “Yes? And you are?”

  “My name is Gabby. I was hoping you’d answer some questions about your ex-wife.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. I’m investigating the murder of Michael Cunningham and need some more information.”

  His gaze darkened. “She had an affair with him. Is that what you want to know?”

  “It’s a start. What else can you tell me?”

  He shrugged. “He’s the reason we split. Barbara insisted he was going to leave Gloria for her. I told her to dream on. I moved out and they continued with their fling.”

  “When did it end?”

  “As far as I know, it didn’t.”

  “You don’t seem very upset about your split.”

  He rubbed his beard. “We hadn’t been happy in a long time. Barbara has some emotional issues. And she’s spoiled, used to getting what she wants. Let’s just say life has been peaceful without her.”