by Zack Klika
Year-round Christmas lights dangled from the roof. Year-round junk littered the front lawn—well, the little bit of lawn that was left. It was mostly just weeds and gravel now. Before going in, she emptied half of the contents of her pill bottle into another unmarked pill bottle and put it in her breast pocket. Then she eased into the cramped home, where she was expecting dinner. At least that was what her mom had invited her over for. Instead, she had found her mom sitting on the couch with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, watching some courtroom reality show. Her dad was on the couch as well, a vacant gaze on his face, possibly watching the show as well. He used to be so animated. Now he was checked out. Riley had told her mother that smoking around him wasn’t helping at all. Riley’s concerns went ignored.
Much like she was being ignored now. Neither one of her parents acknowledged her when she arrived. Riley did spot two empty TV dinners on the trash-infested coffee table. It was depressing being around them for too long, so she said her hellos and made the visit as quick as possible.
She gave her mom some money, which she promised she would pay back next week, and then pulled the pill bottle from her pocket and placed it in her father’s hand. The loving squeeze he returned made the trip worth it. She kissed him on the cheek and headed out. Her first pit stop complete.
*
It was almost eleven at night by the time Riley arrived at the Clarksville police station. With any luck, a new desk sergeant would be on duty and she would get exactly what she needed. She pushed through the tempered-glass front door and looked around the quiet area. The station had that moldy smell that a lot of military buildings had. Riley had become accustomed to it long ago.
A slender desk sergeant sat behind a high counter, flipping through the pages of a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. Riley walked down the short, carpeted path and stopped in front of him.
With her sincerest tone, she said, “Excuse me.”
The sergeant set his magazine down and seemed pleased to have a visitor this late at night. He had to be a different desk sergeant than the one she had spoken to multiple times throughout the day. No way this pleasant man with a styled crew cut and thick eyebrows too symmetrical for her liking could be the same person.
“Evening, ma’am,” he said, revealing a set of pearly whites that looked more expensive than her Volvo. “How can I help you?”
“I was hoping to speak with the detective who was on the Jennifer Carlson homicide. I’m a reporter with the Fort Campbell Daily.”
“Mm-hmm. You know what,” he said, “he just might still be here. Let me check.”
She clenched her jaw to maintain her composure. An internal victory raged on.
“Thank you,” Riley said.
The sergeant ran his thin finger down a call sheet to his right, stopping on a name, then ran his finger to the right for the extension number. He picked up the phone and dialed. Riley noted he had stopped on a Detective Lane and that the extension number was 932. Plenty of people had great vision. Not everyone used it like Tim had trained Riley to.
“Heya. You have a reporter here to see you,” he said, then looked up at her. “What’s your name?”
“Emily Riley,” she said.
“Emily Riley,” he repeated into the phone. Then listened.
Riley looked around and saw him steal a glance out of the corner of her eye.
“Yup, sure is,” was all he said before he hung up. He turned to her, “He’ll be right up.”
“Thank you,” Riley said, 99 percent sure she knew what his last comment on the phone meant. It wouldn’t have been the first time she got what she wanted with her looks.
A minute later, Lane came from around the corner. He didn’t seem happy. Didn’t seem bothered either. Just existed in that space and time.
“Hello,” he said, shaking her hand lightly when he reached her. “I’m Detective Lane.”
“Riley,” she said, smiling for effect. “Do you have a few?”
“To be honest,” said Lane, “I was about to head home for the night. What can I do for you?”
To the point. Perfect, thought Riley. “There are a few questions I wanted to ask you about Jennifer Carlson.”
“Wish I could help,” Lane said, “but I’m not on that case anymore. CID took it over. An Agent Sanchez. Real dipshit.”
Riley gave him a genuine laugh at that.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve met him. Maybe you could still help me, though.” She placed her hand on top of his. “It will only take a few minutes.”
Lane’s face went from white to red-hot in an instant. The desired outcome. He cleared his throat. “You know what, why don’t you come down to my desk. We can talk there.”
Riley saw the desk sergeant shake his head. It didn’t bother her. You got by how you got by. That was life. Lane held the waist-high swing door open for her and she walked through, taking in his scent as she walked by. He smelled like a light smoke and woods with a hint of vanilla. Not cheap vanilla either. Riley pretended not to notice Lane checking out her ass as he followed her down the hall, back to his desk.
When they made it down to his desk, Lane offered her coffee. She declined. Then she wondered why Lane looked like he belonged in an issue of GQ, not the offices of the Clarksville Police Department. He kicked his feet up on his desk, leaned back in his chair, and motioned to the chair to the left of his desk. Riley sat down. A few other detectives hung around, but none within earshot. Silence of the night had a grip on the place.
“So how far did you get before CID took over?” Riley asked while Lane still seemed off his guard.
Lane nodded while stifling a yawn. “The medical examiner finished the autopsy right before someone from base picked up her body.”
“Agent Sanchez, correct?”
“Yup,” Lane said, “that’s him. Very quiet. The no-nonsense type.” He paused, thick worry lines forming between his eyebrows. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about his case with you actually.”
Riley knew exactly how to play this.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble with him or anything.”
“Shit,” said Lane, the worry disappearing as she saw him realize how he must have looked, “he can’t get me in trouble. I just meant— It doesn’t matter. Why are you interested in what happened to her?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened to a fellow soldier,” Riley said with her best sad smile. “I don’t want any statements. This is just for me. Off the record.”
Lane thought about it.
“I know she was killed,” Riley said. “And I know it was pretty bad.”
“Pretty bad?” scoffed Lane. “It was gruesome. She was beaten to within an inch of her life and then carved up like a Thanksgiving ham.”
After that, Lane told her everything. Riley felt bad. It shouldn’t be so easy to get a detective talking. He told her that Jennifer was almost beaten to death and afterwards mutilated in a number of ways. Her throat slit. Her chest stabbed eighteen times. Eighteen seemed excessive. Riley took it all in, mental notes being taken for a later time. She knew this would be a good story, but she couldn’t believe her luck. Once she published Jennifer Carlson’s story, it would get picked up by every major news outlet. Guaranteed. The crime itself didn’t make any sense, though.
“Did you find anything at the crime scene?” asked Riley.
“There were partial tire tracks. I gave Agent Sanchez the mold that forensics took of them, but it’s difficult matching tires to a vehicle without a suspect.”
“What do you think about it all?”
“Honestly,” Lane said, “I don’t know what to think. It looks like a crime of passion. But that doesn’t explain why she had her throat slit. If I were still on the case, I’d probably be trying to figure out why someone would stage her murder in that way. I was only working the case for twelve hours, but I had forensics do a search of murders in Tennessee and Kentucky over the past two years and nothing similar came up.”
“Did she have a phone or anything on her?”
Lane shook his head. “We never found one. Sanchez probably gathered all of her electronics from wherever she lived.”
Riley already knew that. Jennifer’s barracks room had been almost completely empty when she searched it. It didn’t provide her with any information other than the photo. And even the photo wasn’t proving to be helpful.
“Leaving her in the open like that,” Riley said. “Whoever did it wanted her to be found. Is that consistent with crimes of passion?”
“No,” said Lane. “Not at all. It’s also not common for victims in situations like this to look like they had been in fifty different fights over the last few months.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you.” Lane opened a desk drawer, pulled out a file, and flopped it down on the desk. “You’re not queasy at the sight of blood, are you?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Lane smirked as he opened the folder and slid it closer to Riley so they could share. Riley’s stomach clenched at the sight of Jennifer’s mutilated body. The slit throat looked more gruesome than she could have imagined. A flood of emotion overwhelmed her. This didn’t look like the same soldier she had seen a wallet-sized photo of. Purple, black, and blue bruises covered her face, making her unrecognizable.
“Like I was saying, Jennifer Carlson put up a fight. She had bruised knuckles and cuts all over her hands.”
Riley didn’t respond. Couldn’t. What she was doing sank in. Chasing a story for glory. Not what Jennifer deserved. Not by a long shot. Lane continued on.
“A lot of the cuts and bruises on her body were different ages, some as old as a few weeks. The coroner even thought a few of the scars on her hands and body looked a few months old.”
Tim was right. A fellow soldier deserved more than what Riley was trying to offer. Much more. Riley made the decision right there that she would find out what happened to Jennifer Carlson because it was the right thing to do, not because it had the potential to make her famous in the reporting world.
“You okay?” asked Lane.
“Yes,” she said, finding her composure in an instant. “What do the older scars and bruises mean?”
“That she was in a lot of fights. But this time whoever she was fighting with took things to another level.”
“So she just walked around the past few months looking like someone beat the hell out of her and no one in her unit said anything?
“No,” Lane said. “The older scars and bruises were restricted to the body. Her face only had bruising and cuts from the night she was killed.”
“So there were rules to the fighting before this final fight?”
Lane shrugged with indifference.
But he had been a treasure trove of information. Jennifer didn’t have a cell phone on her. Completely possible Agent Sanchez didn’t find one either. The biggest revelation was that Jennifer had fought for her life. No one had snuck up on her and done the things Lane mentioned. Jennifer seemed to have fought for her life on more than one occasion. Images of Jennifer’s tortured body wouldn’t leave Riley’s mind. Even when she tried to think about something else, they just pushed through and screamed, Look at me.
“Thank you for your time, Detective,” said Riley and stood up to leave.
“It was my pleasure. If you need anything else just give me a call. Anything at all.” Lane gave her a card with his information on it.
Riley smiled politely.
“Let me walk you out,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Riley turned and left. Lane had not provided her with a motive, but she was beginning to form her own theory. Kesler said Special Forces guys got off on beating one another up. And Jennifer participated in the combatives matches. If she was killed during a hazing incident, then it followed that someone would stage her on that bridge to make it look like a crime of passion so it wouldn’t link back to the SFAS course. The easiest way to dodge a bullet is to make sure you’re not standing in front of the gun. But Kesler said no one in SFAS would want her dead. The only hole in her theory.
Riley said good night to the desk sergeant and walked through the swing door. Halfway down the carpeted path, she stopped. A purple car screeched to a halt in front of the station. Riley and the desk sergeant exchanged looks—hers worried, his offended—and watched as an exhausted and filthy man stormed into the building, then stopped at the end of the narrow path like a deer caught in the headlights. The door slowly closed behind him. As wild as the situation looked, the desk sergeant didn’t seem to see an immediate threat, the magazine still dangling from his hands.
Dirt and crusted blood covered the man’s face. He looked at the desk sergeant, then Riley, took a deep breath, composed himself, and walked past Riley, right up to the desk sergeant. Drops of blood rolled down his cheek, splashing off the polished counter the desk sergeant sat behind. Behind him, drops of blood lined the faded burgundy path, like a trail that could be followed back to the purple car in case he lost his way. Riley was about to say something, but then he spoke.
“I need to talk to Detective Conn. My name is Lee Parsons and I know who killed the soldier on the Fork Creek bridge. The same person just tried to kill me because of it.”
The desk sergeant set his magazine down.
Chapter 23
Buck struggled to maintain his pace down the dirt road. He had decided that there was more than enough time to jump into the wood line if he saw someone coming. Slim chance of that, though. In the distance, dim light crept around the edges of the tall trees that seemed to be laughing at Buck. The speedway was near. But still an hour or so away by foot.
Buck Miller checked his phone and, with a look of dread, saw there was finally some reception. Nothing good would come from this call. The man he had to call had seemed like a nice enough guy in the beginning. And he had added a new revenue stream to Buck’s operation. Buck had been organizing fights for almost seven years. Never a lack of fighters, but the fights were getting stale.
Something caught his foot and he went down. Hard. He cursed the ground as he picked up his phone from the dirt and stood up, brushed himself off, and set off again.
At the time, the man he feared calling had seemed like a godsend. He provided the fights with a different kind of format. A new competitor. Soldiers. Betting doubled overnight. His new partner didn’t want a dime of the proceeds. Just a favor. Favors didn’t bother Buck. Favors were his bread and butter for a long time. Someone beating on you too much? Go to Buck. He’ll take care of it. Someone stealing from you? Buck’s your guy.
Now, because of the favors, Buck had a woman’s murder on his conscience, a dead friend, and someone who knew he was connected to both of them. If anyone could fix the situation, the man he was about to call could.
He punched in the numbers on his mobile, then held the phone to his ear.
“What is it?” an unnerving flat voice answered on the other end.
“We have a problem,” Buck said.
Chapter 24
Saturday, 10/14/17
At 1:05 a.m. Conn stormed through the quiet hospital hallway. She would have been there sooner, but she had to wait on her sister to come over and watch Dustin. As it stood, she was the second to last to arrive. In the heat of the moment she had forgotten to call Johnson. No good would come from thinking about how angry he would be when he found out about Lee. A mixture of worry and fury pulled at her face. Her hair was up in a bun and she was wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. Lane was there. So was a woman with dark hair and a pretty face. Conn felt a pang of jealousy. To be that young again, she thought. In an instant, the thought disappeared. She was here for a reason.
“Which room is he in?” Conn asked Lane.
“Three,” Lane said. “Agent Sanchez from CID is in there with him now.”
Conn felt nonplussed. Lane had called her, and she had hurried over.
“How d
id CID know he was here?”
Lane looked like a fox caught in the henhouse.
“This guy Lee said he had information about the dead soldier, so I called Agent Sanchez. He’s in charge of the Jennifer Carlson investigation.”
Conn imagined what her hands would look like wrapped around Lane’s neck. She had wanted to talk to Lee first. He would have been more comfortable talking to her. And Lane knew exactly what he was doing. Telling Conn that he had made the call because of protocol was bullshit. But it was the kind of bullshit logic that helped someone climb up the ranks. No one liked a rule breaker.
Out of the corner of her eye, Conn could see the dark-haired woman staring straight at her. She said nothing.
“Now that you’re here, can I go home?” Lane asked.
“Why not? God forbid you get wrapped up in anything that resembles police work.”
He was too tired to fight or didn’t care. He just nodded, turned, and left.
Two uniformed military police officers stood in front of the door to Lee’s room. Room 3. Conn marched over to the door, which they promptly blocked before she could enter. She told them who she was and tried to go in again. They wouldn’t budge.
“I’m sorry. You can’t go in there,” was all one of them said, then pretended she didn’t exist.
No point in arguing with them. They had their orders. Orders were followed. Conn walked to one of the chairs across the hall and sat down next to the woman with brown hair. Agent Sanchez would come out sooner or later. He was probably trying to close the case and get home. She knew how CID worked. Quick. Didn’t like to leave cases open any longer than they needed to be. Conn was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the cup being extended to her from the slim arm attached to the woman sitting one seat down from her. Conn took it.
