by Zack Klika
“Thanks,” Conn said.
“No problem,” she said, maintaining eye contact. “The name’s Riley.”
Conn looked the woman over. “Is that your first or last name?”
“Last,” Riley said with a smile.
“Detective Conn,” she replied and looked back to the two guards standing as still as Army soldiers could.
Seconds that felt like minutes passed by. An uneasy feeling came over Conn. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was supposed to be having a conversation with Riley. If not for her frazzled state of mind, Conn would have been perfectly content with being lost in the silence.
“What do you do in the Army?” Conn finally asked. The woman went by her last name, so she had to be stationed at Fort Campbell. Possibly a civilian contractor.
“I’m a journalist.”
Conn looked to the room Lee was in and then back to Riley with a hard stare.
“If you’re here to . . .”
“Listen,” Riley said, “I’m just trying to figure out who killed Jennifer Carlson and why. Nothing more, nothing less. What happened to her was horrendous.”
Conn agreed with her. Something awful had gone down on that bridge.
“That doesn’t excuse the fact you can’t be here. This is an ongoing murder investigation. You need to leave.”
“Maybe I can help,” said Riley.
“I don’t think you can. And it’s not even my case.”
“Then why did Lee ask to speak with you?”
Riley knew too much, Conn thought. But not enough to piece anything together.
“That’s confidential,” Conn said.
“Like eighteen-stab-wounds confidential?”
“You need to leave.” Conn felt her face begin to go red.
“Just because it isn’t your case doesn’t mean you don’t care. Someone like Agent Sanchez isn’t concerned with the whole story. And there is definitely a story here. I think Jennifer was killed because she was a woman in the military. Whether or not you want to be part of trying to cover that up from the public is on you.”
Determination radiated from Riley. Made Conn’s resolve feel weak by comparison. She didn’t remember being that strong-willed at that age. Jealousy reared its ugly head again. Before Conn could say anything else, Riley had fished out a business card and was holding it out towards her.
“That’s my direct line. Call me later if you change your mind.”
Conn took the card as Sanchez walked out of Lee’s room.
He shook his head. “Hello, Sergeant Riley.”
“Evening, Agent Sanchez.”
The tension was palpable between Sanchez and Riley. Made Conn perspire.
“Looks like you have some new leads,” Riley said.
“I don’t have time for this,” Sanchez said, then turned to Conn. “Are you Detective Conn?”
Up until that point Conn had been on standby, observing the two of them.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you come in here, please?”
Agent Sanchez didn’t wait for an answer. He went back into the room and Conn followed, the two MPs letting her through now that they had overheard the invitation.
Inside the room, Lee was laid up on a bed that had him upright at a forty-five-degree angle. Tubes ran from an IV into his right arm. A pulse oximeter at the tip of his index finger showed numbers that, at a glance, looked to be okay to Conn. Machines monitoring his vitals beeped steadily and did not indicate anything was wrong with him. A large bandage covered the left side of his face. But he looked fine. That is, as fine as the circumstances would permit.
Conn had to shut down any feelings she had for Lee while Agent Sanchez was present. Sleeping with an informant was grounds for suspension and possibly termination if it interfered with the prosecution of any criminal charges. She stood up a little bit straighter and made her face a blank slate. Lee looked to catch on.
“How are you?” she asked Lee.
“Been better. It all happened pretty fast.”
Before Conn could respond or apologize—she didn’t really know what her next words would be—Agent Sanchez decided to cut the reunion short.
“He wouldn’t talk to me unless you were here,” Sanchez said to Conn.
Conn looked to Lee. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but it had to be bad for him to look the way he did.
“Start from the beginning,” Conn told Lee.
Twenty minutes passed by the time Lee finished. He told them about what he heard at Buck Miller’s house about Jennifer Carlson. Told them how he pieced together that it was in fact her whom Danny Smith had talked about. Lee briefly mentioned being clubbed and then almost killed. And then he told them he killed Danny and stole Buck’s car to get away.
Dettra Conn was processing the information when Agent Sanchez interrupted her train of thought.
“And why did you kill Danny?” Sanchez asked.
Before Lee could answer, Conn jumped in.
“Weren’t you listening? He said Danny was about to kill him.”
Keep it together, she told herself.
Sanchez looked at Conn and made a pop sound with his lower lip and tongue.
“We need to bring Buck Miller in then,” Sanchez said.
“‘We?” Conn asked.
“Yes. I’ll have my superior talk to yours. You’ll be assigned to me on this case.”
Conn nodded. Then she turned to Lee with anger in her eyes.
“Why didn’t you say anything about Jennifer before?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t sure it was anything to bother you with. Buck and Danny never mentioned her name, so I didn’t know it was the same girl they found on the bridge.”
“Where were you Wednesday night?” Sanchez asked Lee.
Lee looked caught off guard by the question. Conn tried to hide a look of guilt. Rule out everyone. She knew the drill.
“At home,” said Lee.
“Alone?” Sanchez pressed.
Lee took a moment to answer. He looked at Conn and then back to Sanchez. “Yes.”
“We need to speak in private,” Sanchez said to Conn and walked out of the room.
Conn gave Lee an apologetic look and followed after Sanchez. Wednesday night Conn had been curled up in the sheets with Lee. He wouldn’t say anything, though. She was sure of it. Putting her in an odd situation. If Sanchez believed Lee was a suspect, he would keep him on lockdown until they got Buck. No telling when or if they would ever see Buck again, though.
Conn and Sanchez walked down the brightly lit corridor to the coffee machine, sizing each other up along the way.
“His story hold up to you?” Sanchez asked her.
“Yes,” said Conn.
“How do you know him?”
Like someone trained to lie to a polygraph, Conn steadied her breathing and tried to minimize any tells that might give her away.
“He’s an informant for me and my partner. We were trying to bust Buck for illegal fights.”
No point in telling him about the weapons they thought that Buck was selling but were not sure existed yet. Sanchez thought that over for a second.
“Do you have someone that can go with forensics down to where Danny Smith’s body is?” he asked her.
“My partner. Detective Johnson.”
“He needs to be there thirty minutes ago,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to bring in Buck Miller. You have an address for him?”
Conn nodded and said, “Two, actually. His home and the speedway he owns.”
“Okay. Let’s hit the house first. If he was left on foot in the middle of the woods, he’s probably called someone for help and made it back by now.”
Agent Sanchez was blowing back down the hallway before Conn could say or do a thing. A man on a mission. A mission she was now part of.
Chapter 25
Riley locked her apartment door, kicked off her shoes, threw herself onto her bed, and pulled a pillow over her face. Exhaustion had h
it a few hours prior. To say the evening was eventful would have been an understatement. If Lee Parsons really did know who killed Jennifer Carlson, then CID and the Clarksville PD would have the killer apprehended in no time. That was good news. So why did she still feel like shit about it all? The feeling that she was missing some obvious piece of the story nagged at her. But she couldn’t get a clear thought across in her current state of mind. All she wanted to do was pass out. She opened her phone to set five alarms and saw she had a message from Thomas. All it said was, “Meet me at the Lodge. Got some info.” That was almost two hours ago. She texted him back asking if he was still there, and he confirmed he was.
A beer didn’t sound bad. Sleep sounded better. Riley decided to meet him. She rolled out of bed in one fluid motion and walked into the bathroom. Cupping her hands beneath the faucet, she filled the makeshift bowl with cool water and splashed it on her face. Didn’t help. She threw on a pair of slim jeans and a form-fitting sweater that would keep her warm but not hot inside the stuffy bar she was going to.
The Lodge made most of its money on the weekends when it was packed to the max. Most of the soldiers who came to the Lodge were white men. You didn’t see many female soldiers there. You did, however, see plenty of women. Most of them looking for an imagined meal ticket.
Why women thought marrying a soldier would lead to a life of happiness was beyond Riley. She knew the demands the military put on its troops. Maybe it was just the uniforms that they fell for. Riley knew that most of the enlisted male soldiers had been married more than once. And why not? You did get a pay bump if you were married, which usually disappeared quicker than a free shot of whiskey.
The Lodge consisted of an open floor plan with a circular bar in the center. Space around the bar was used mostly as a dance floor. A disco ball popped on every few minutes and sent the drunkest of the patrons into a frenzy. There were pool tables and arcade games in one corner of the bar where new relationships discovered on the dance floor were solidified over shots.
Riley spotted Thomas chatting up a tall woman by the bar. He looked to be dishing out some of his best lines, but stopped when he saw Riley making her way over. No surprise there. Riley was better-looking than most of the women in the bar. Thomas landing her as a loyal customer was pure luck on his part. Riley let him hug her and even give her a kiss on the cheek. The tall woman scoffed and wandered off with her free beer when she spotted another single male at the bar.
If not for Thomas’s side business, Riley might have considered taking part in a real relationship with him. She could only imagine with how many other women he had arrangements like theirs. A shame, because Thomas seemed like a good guy.
“What’s up, cutie,” Thomas said, smiling from ear to ear.
“You find anything out?” she asked over the music.
“Depends on when I get that dinner.”
Riley leaned in close to him, her mouth almost brushing up against his ear. “How about tomorrow night?”
Thomas bit his lower lip, then took a swig from his beer and motioned for two more from the bustling bartender. After the beers arrived, he gave Riley one and nodded to the patio. They made their way through the thick crowd and pushed through a flimsy screen door onto the patio. Thomas pulled a pack of smokes from his pocket and offered Riley one. She declined, but she’d probably take one after a beer. He pulled one from the pack with his dry lips and lit up. Thomas leaned against the wood rail and looked to the sky as he blew his first drag into the cool night. No visible stars in the sky. Riley wondered what exactly he was looking at.
“He was with the ammo squad,” Thomas finally said. “His job was to help check out weapons and supply ammunition to all of the training exercises for the battalion. The few people I talked to that were with the unit during that time said they don’t recall any training exercises scheduled for the day he died. But their company commander spoke at the PT formation the morning after the accident and requested that anyone with information about who Andrew Brown was with the night prior come forward.”
“Did anyone come forward?”
“Neither of the soldiers I spoke to remembers anyone coming forward,” Thomas said.
“Of course not. That’d make this too easy,” said Riley. “Did you get the captain’s name?”
“Captain Holt. He’s still the commander of the unit.”
“You’d think an officer would lose command after a soldier dies on their watch like that.”
Thomas shrugged indifferently.
“Who’d you talk to at his old unit?” asked Riley.
“A few enlisted soldiers. I can get a list of names if you want,” he said sarcastically.
“Anything else?” Riley said with a tone that sobered Thomas up.
He took a swig of his beer.
“No one I spoke with knew why Andrew Brown was doing training on his own off base. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen. Ever.”
“I agree,” Riley said to herself more than him.
“So you going to fill me in on what this is all about?” Thomas asked as he blew a ring of smoke into the nothingness that was the sky.
“Not tonight.”
She could tell he was fine with that for now.
Riley decided it was best if she drove Thomas home. He put up a bit of a fight when she tried to get him to leave, but then she told him what was in store for him back at his place if he left with her. He smiled and followed her right out the front door.
He was counting sheep in her passenger’s seat before they ever left the parking lot. She fished out his wallet and grabbed his ID card from it. Something felt off while she drove back to base. Murder, fights, solo training exercises . . . none of it made sense. On the surface, it looked like Jennifer and Andrew couldn’t possibly be connected. But Riley knew it was there. Every new piece of information she gathered pushed her on. Jennifer Carlson had his photo in her barracks room. She was assigned to 3BCT. As was Andrew Brown. They were both dead. What else? Riley tried to wring the information out of her steering wheel.
Riley knew she was getting too emotionally involved in the story. The story of Jennifer Carlson’s murder. Not a story. Justice. Justice was what Riley really wanted now. Not fame.
Light flooded the main gate at Fort Campbell as Riley pulled up to a gate guard and stopped. She handed him her ID along with Thomas’s. The gate guard looked at the IDs and then checked the photos against the two occupants in the car.
“He all right?” the guard asked, nodding to Thomas.
“Yeah. Long week.”
The guard handed Riley both of the ID cards and motioned for her to continue on.
After helping Thomas into bed, Riley decided she was too tired to drive home. The clock on Thomas’s nightstand read 3:35 a.m. Definitely too late to try and drive. Plus, Thomas’s sheets smelled nice, like they had been washed fairly recently. As sleep took hold, Riley got the feeling her every move was being watched. Then she was out.
Chapter 26
Dawn was only a few hours away as Johnson supervised the forensic team’s collection of evidence surrounding Danny Smith’s lifeless body. He was pissed—not because his right boot was soaked through to the sock but because he had been the last to know about recent developments in his and Conn’s operation, or lack thereof. The crime scene Lee described made Johnson skeptical at first. It sounded like a fabricated story. Then he had seen Danny lying on the dew-covered forest clearing with a bloody knife next to his body. A forensics tech bagged Lee’s broken phone. Then the knife when Johnson gave them the go-ahead.
So far everything Lee had said checked out. At least now he had a reason to bring Buck in and get a search warrant. He thought about going to the warehouse and looking around for the ammunition and guns they had been told about. But he was needed at this crime scene. The forensic team had been waiting for almost an hour by the time he arrived.
He cursed at the situation. Lee was his informant, not Conn’s. He’d told her as much anywa
y. Not that it mattered. Captain Landel told him Conn would be working with CID on the case and taking the lead for the department. Captain Landel was as mad as he was. Johnson didn’t like being told what to do, but relations with the base were a fickle thing, and if they requested someone, they usually got it.
Johnson didn’t have anything against Conn, or women in law enforcement roles; it was a matter of seniority. He had been with the Clarksville PD for the better part of fifteen years. If there was going to be a high-profile court case, which there no doubt would be if Buck and Danny killed that soldier, he wanted in on it. And for whatever reason it had fallen into Conn’s lap. He would help her through it, though, not hinder her.
“We’re going to transport the body now,” a voice said from behind Johnson.
He spun and saw it was one of the forensic techs. How long had he been standing there and staring into the woods? he wondered. It was too early for this shit.
“That’s fine,” Johnson said.
The tech nodded and walked off.
An assigned department therapist had told him he needed to work on finding the positive in negative situations. His wife of twenty years agreed with the therapist of course. So what was the positive here for him? He thought about it for a few minutes while toeing around the crime scene.
A tech snapped off some photos of the blood trail Lee had left when fleeing the area. There was the fact things could have gone much worse. Having Lee go in without a wire had been approved by Captain Landel, but not making sure Lee made it home safe was on him and Conn. He would need to tighten up his game. After fifteen years of working cases, he was becoming complacent. If Lee had been killed, there would no doubt be an internal investigation into how Johnson and Conn had procured his services.
But Lee had escaped. A positive.
Chapter 27
Conn was in charge of gathering backup for Buck’s arrest. Captain Landel had authorized the use of the PD’s tactical unit, which had been formed three years ago but had only been used a handful of times. Conn got the feeling Landel was pissed. Not entirely at her. More at the situation her department was in, Conn assumed. She had also caught a hint of anger from Johnson when she called him. But she hadn’t asked for this. Sanchez was the one who all but ordered her to help. And now Sanchez was seated in Johnson’s chair as they awaited the arrival of the tactical team.
