Hollow Bond (A Magnolia Parish Mystery Book 2) Page 3

  “Ready to finish this?” Dawn’s question pulled me back to the present.

  I nodded, turned, and walked toward the original scene where the man still lay exposed. He was possibly the woman’s husband, maybe even a father. The damage to his face made it impossible to gauge his age. He had a name, but what was it? I crossed under the crime scene tape. He’d just have to settle for the unoriginal Mr. Doe handle until we found out his real name. I waved my hand to indicate the area wrapped within the tape. “Let’s finish processing this scene and then work up the area where we found the lady. We need to find the route those bastards took to dump the bodies. Maybe we can backtrack to a house or camp.”

  We walked to my cruiser and Dawn retrieved her crime scene box from the back seat. I opened the trunk and sighed when I saw the oversized duffel bag. It nearly took up the entire trunk. I’d forgotten to unload it when I returned home from the boxing gym. I certainly didn’t want Dawn seeing it. She’d given me enough grief when I told her I wanted to turn pro at the ripe age of thirty-three. She thought I was going through a midlife crisis or acting out because Debbie kicked me out the house. I’d laughed her off, but truth be told, I needed something to distract my thoughts and occupy my time—and there was nothing quite as distracting as getting punched repeatedly in the head. Of course, as soon as I stepped out of the ring my thoughts returned to Samantha. The idea of not having her home was tearing me up inside, but I’d never admit it out loud.

  “Still boxing, eh?” Dawn asked.

  I nodded and wrestled the bag out of the trunk so I could retrieve my crime scene box from under it. When the box was out, I replaced the duffel bag, slammed the trunk shut. Without much conversation between us, we set out to comb over the crime scene—every inch of it. We didn’t leave a stone unturned or a leaf untouched, but it was no use. After we finished processing the scene, we were no closer to solving the case than we were when we first arrived.

  “What’s next, partner?” Dawn asked.

  “We try to retrace the killers’ steps.” I began inspecting the ground in the small clearing, searching for tracks leading to and from the scene. Dawn stayed close to my back pocket and, with the aid of our flashlights, we managed to find a faint track that led through the trees and stretched north toward Route Twenty-Three. A broken twig here, a smashed blade of grass there, and drops of blood led me to the shoulder of the highway. When I reached that point, I looked up. It was about twenty feet from where Mr. Doe had managed to drag himself out of the woods. His route was more jagged and uncertain, while this one went directly from the roadway to the trees.

  “This is it,” I said to Dawn. “This is where they stopped to dump the bodies.”

  She lifted the camera from where it hung around her neck and photographed the area. We then began recovering blood evidence along the path and packaging it.

  It was nearly three-thirty in the morning when we finished processing the entire area and loading our gear back into my cruiser. The coroner’s wagon had picked up Mr. Doe’s body two hours earlier and, at my insistence, Lieutenant Marshall had left around the same time. He offered to stay and assist with traffic, but at that late hour, Route Twenty-Three had been reduced to a ghost highway. The only traffic passing through were a few random cars or pickups, along with an occasional trucker from New Orleans making early-morning deliveries to Jasper and the low-lying towns within Magnolia Parish. The heavier traffic remained along Highway Twelve, which paralleled Route 23 some thirty or forty miles to the north.

  Dawn and I spent the next hour, or so, walking the shoulders of the road looking for any sign of evidence or articles of clothing belonging to our victims. We found nothing.

  I wiped sweat from my forehead with the front of my shirt, surveyed the ground we’d covered. With nothing left to do at the scene and no other leads, I turned to Dawn. “Ready to head to the hospital and check on our victim?”

  “No.” Dawn walked to my car, opened the passenger’s door. “Bring me back to the office, so I can go check on our victim. You’re going home to get some rest. You have to get ready for Samantha’s visit.”

  I slipped into the driver’s seat, shook my head. “I can’t just leave in the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing to do now but wait.”

  “That’s not true. We can begin doing interviews and stuff.”

  “Interviews?” she asked. “Who are we going to interview? We don’t even know the victims’ names.”

  “Right. We’ll have to start working on identifying them.”

  “Look, I’ll do some checking around; see if we have any missing persons who match their descriptions. I’ll also keep tabs on Mrs. Doe’s condition. If there’re any new developments, I’ll call you right away.”

  “I don’t know...”

  “You need to get ready for Sam’s visit,” she insisted. “The case will still be here when you come back to work.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I guess so.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Saturday Evening

  I looked over the small apartment, nodded my approval. After awakening from a restless sleep at four o’clock in the afternoon, I’d spent the remainder of the day mulling over the case while I put away my clean clothes, dusted, washed dishes, and vacuumed. It was not work I relished, but I knew it’d be worth it. It was a special day and the two-bedroom apartment had to be spotless. I went over the checklist in my mind.

  “Ah,” I said aloud, “one thing left to do.” I walked to my bedroom and snatched the pistol from the nightstand. I stared at it for a long moment. I’d always said an empty gun was a useless gun, and Samantha knew what to do if she ever found a gun—I’d made sure of it long ago—but I couldn’t risk her stumbling across my loaded pistol. I dropped the magazine, pulled the slide back to kick the live round out of the chamber, and—after catching the live round in midair—placed all of it on the top shelf in my closet. I shut and locked the door and nodded my approval.

  Next, I went into the spare bedroom. Everything looked to be in order. The bed, curtains, and carpet were pink. A box of markers and a stack of coloring books sat atop a small white desk that was positioned in one corner of the room. A matching chair was pulled out and a large stuffed black bear squatted on it, facing the doorway. I checked the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. Almost six o’clock. The radio droned from the kitchen and the word “Magnolia” caught my attention. I hurried over and turned up the volume. My case!

  The news reporter mentioned she was in front of the Magnolia Parish Detective Bureau in Payneville and she said, “A spokesman from the sheriff’s office was tight-lipped this morning and would only confirm that two bodies were discovered along Route Twenty-Three east of Jasper. He said one was deceased and the other had been transported to an area hospital. He said a press conference would be scheduled later on as evidence is developed. They are asking that anyone with information about a missing white couple call Crime Stoppers. You can remain anonymous and a reward in the amount of five thousand dollars is being offered. For more on this story, keep your radio dial—”

  I flicked off the radio, made my way to the front porch, where I sat on a lounge chair and waited impatiently for Samantha to arrive. I thought about calling Dawn, but hesitated. Do they need me to go into the office? I need to identify that couple as soon as possible. Until then, we’re dead in the water. I pulled out my cell phone and, for the umpteenth time, read the text message I’d received from Dawn that morning: “Bran, victim is in induced coma due to swelling on the brain. Hospital will call if condition changes. No missing person cases locally. I’m reaching out to other agencies. Have good time with Sam. DO NOT call or come to work until she leaves! Nothing to do here but wait. Once the autopsy is performed, we’ll know more.”

  I sighed, shoved the phone in my pocket. She was right, I knew, that Samantha deserved my undivided attention, and there wasn’t much to do at the moment on the case. The public had been alerted an
d other agencies were being contacted for missing persons. Dawn knew what to do. They’d survived without me before and they’d survive after I was retired and gone.

  I suddenly wondered if I wanted to get called out. I had to admit to being a little intimidated by the prospect of having to entertain Sam on my own. It would be her first visit to the new apartment. Hell, it was actually the first time I’d ever been alone with her for a weekend. When Debbie and I were together, it was always Debbie who stayed home while I went off to work or training. What if Samantha didn’t want to stay with me? What if she got bored? What if—

  “Hey, Brandon, how are you?”

  I jerked my head around. Kristen Boyd, my neighbor, stood several feet away in her doorway. Dark legs extended forever from orange shorts, and a blue, sleeveless shirt stretched over her sculptured torso. We had only spoken a handful of times and I was mildly flattered that she remembered my name. I kept my eyes trained directly on hers, smiled. “I’m good.”

  She stepped out onto the concrete porch, took a seat beside me. “What’re you waiting for?”

  “What makes you think I’m waiting for something?”

  “You might be a detective, but you’re not the only one who can read a situation.”

  “Is it that obvious?” I asked.

  “You look like a teenager waiting for his first date.”

  I laughed. It was a forced, empty laughter. “No, nothing like that.”

  She leaned forward, her brown eyes inquisitive. “Well, what is it?”

  “It’s my daughter. I’m waiting for my daughter.”

  “You have kids?”

  I thought I detected a hint of disappointment in her voice. “I have one...a girl. She’s seven and her name’s Samantha.” I fished my wallet from a back pocket and pulled out a school picture. “This is her graduating from kindergarten.”

  Kristen took the picture. “Wow, she’s a cute kid.”

  I nodded. “She has the same red hair and green eyes as Debbie. This picture looks identical to Debbie’s school picture. It’s kind of eerie.”

  “Debbie?”

  “My wife...well, we’re separated.”

  Kristen handed the picture back and I returned it to my wallet. We both sat quiet for several minutes. I stared out beyond the parking lot to where three boys wrestled along the apartment’s bayou-side park. In my peripheral vision, I saw Kristen studying the ground. She finally broke the silence. “So, you and Debbie...are you guys getting divorced?”

  “No. We’re just taking a break, I guess.”

  More silence. The boys had stopped wrestling and were walking across a small hill toward a bank of apartments south of where mine was located. Kristen suddenly leaned forward and slapped my arm. I jerked my attention from the boys, found her leaning into me, her face inches from mine.

  Damn, you smell good, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

  She smiled sheepishly, turned her hand up to show me a smashed mosquito and a droplet of blood on her palm. “I saved your life.”

  I laughed. “Thank you for—”

  The blasting of a car’s horn interrupted me. I quickly stood to my feet. Debbie’s white Tahoe came to an abrupt stop in front of the apartment complex and the driver’s door flung open. I turned to Kristen. “That’s Debbie. I...I’d better go.”

  She nodded her understanding, disappeared into her apartment.

  My mouth felt dry. I walked on slightly shaky legs down the sidewalk. It was my first face-to-face with Debbie since the separation two months earlier. I’d thought about the meeting nearly every second of every day, had planned out my speech, picked my words carefully. I reached the edge of the seemingly mile-long sidewalk and waited for Debbie to walk around the Tahoe.

  I caught my breath when she came into view. Although she’d lost weight, her breasts were still full and threatened to push through the fabric of the purple sundress that cloaked her tanned and sleek body. As she walked, the warm breeze caressed her red hair. She’d cut it shorter and taken the flatiron to it. I frowned, thinking back to when we lived together. I could still remember the slight smell of burnt hair that would indicate she was almost ready to start her day. It was the last thing she’d do in the morning before work—after eating breakfast, dressing, doing her makeup, and spraying on her perfume. She’d worn the same perfume for as long as I’d known her. It was the same perfume she’d worn on the night I met her, and it was another smell I’d come to miss.

  Debbie had many different smells. There was the smell of food on her clothes when I’d get home in the evening, fresh soap on her neck after her shower, facial cleanser on her face when I’d kiss her before bed, and coffee on her breath first thing in the morning. I grunted. I never thought I’d miss that morning coffee smell.

  When Debbie made it to my side of the SUV, she reached for the handle to the back passenger’s door. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to speak.

  “Save it,” she said sharply.

  “I was hoping we could talk.”

  She paused, turned to look up at me. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

  My mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She pointed past me. “I saw you and your girlfriend getting all cozy over there.”

  “That’s not my girlfriend, and we weren’t getting cozy. That’s the first time I even had a conversation with her other than to say hello.”

  “Well, go back and talk to her. We have nothing to discuss. My lawyer will be getting in touch with you.”

  My chest burned. A lawyer? I wanted to ask, “Are you really going through with this?” Instead, I said, “Baby, why are you doing this? I didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, I could understand if I had cheated on you or beat you or was addicted to drugs or something, but I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t done anything right.”

  “Baby, I—”

  “Look, you were never there when it mattered. You missed four of Sam’s birthdays, we’ve never been on family vacation together, and you’ve spent nearly all of our anniversaries on stakeouts or crime scenes. And don’t forget you weren’t there when Sam was born.”

  “I’ve already explained all of—”

  “Brandon, I just can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to wake up one day, old and gray, and look back over my lonely life and wonder what might have been.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time with you and Samantha. Sure, I’ve had to miss a few birthdays and special occasions, but I spend all of my home time with y’all. I have a demanding job, so sue me. You knew that when you married me. You said you could handle it.”

  Debbie had reached for the door handle again, paused. Refusing to look in my direction, she said softly, “That was before you got shot.”

  I scowled. “I don’t understand. You want to divorce me because I almost died?” I wanted to tell her she had given me her blessing that night, but I didn’t want to insinuate she was to blame for what had happened. She’d already expressed some guilt for suggesting I go after that child killer, and I didn’t want to pile it on. Truth be told, I would’ve gone without her blessing, but I’d never admit that aloud.

  Debbie turned to me, her face softened. “You don’t know how it feels to wake up every morning not knowing if that’s the day you’ll become a widow. I need stability. I need to know that you’ll be around until I’m old and gray. I need to know that you’ll be here for Samantha—”

  “No one can guarantee they’ll be around for any length of time. You could die tomorrow and I could live until I’m ninety-three. Nothing’s certain.”

  “I’m sorry. This is the way it has to be.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  I could tell the question caught her off guard. She paused, considering. Finally, she nodded. “Sure, I love you, but it’s not enough. You’re married to your
work and I’m married to a ghost. The stress and uncertainty is killing me. I feel it in my chest every minute of every day when you’re at work. It’s no way to live. I need to move on—for my sake and for Samantha’s sake. That way, if something happens to you, we’ll be used to being on our own.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Daddy!” Samantha could wait no longer. She pushed open the door and sprinted to me, jumped into my arms.

  I bent and scooped her up, squeezed tight. “Jeez! You’ve grown five inches since the last time I saw you!” I kissed her forehead. “I’ve missed you so much, Pumpkinseed.”

  “I missed you more!” Samantha said, wrapping her little arms around my neck.

  Debbie patted Samantha’s back. “I love you, baby. Have a good time.”

  Samantha released my neck, twisted around in my arms and leaned back, reaching out for Debbie. “I want a hug!”

  Debbie leaned in close and hugged Samantha, kissed her forehead—right where I’d kissed her. The warm breeze lifted a fragrance from Debbie and pushed it in my direction. It was a strange scent—a different perfume. What the hell?

  “I’ll pick you up Monday morning,” she told Samantha. “Be good for Daddy.” Without saying another word, she walked around the Tahoe, got in, and drove away.

  She was dressed too nice to be heading back home. Where was she going? Did she have a date? Feeling a slight pain in my chest, I put Samantha down and watched as she waved after Debbie’s Tahoe until it disappeared around the corner of the apartment complex. I bent to grab her bags and when I looked up I thought I saw movement in Kristen’s front window. I stopped and stared, wondering if my eyes had deceived me.

  Samantha tugged on my arm. “Come on, Daddy. I want to see my second room.”