Be Afraid (22 page)

Susan stood on tiptoe, grabbed the small, black cardboard box, and carried it into her kitchen. Marble countertops and stainless-steel appliances glistened under three vintage pendant lights that cast a warm glow on hard surfaces.

She smoothed her hands over the top of the box and then carefully wiped the dust off with her palm. A finger tapped on the top as she summoned the courage to look into a past she’d worked hard to forget. Finally, blowing out another breath she opened the lid.

Inside was a small, black-velvet jewelry box resting on a collection of pictures. She opened the box and studied the small, gold heart charm. Carefully she laced the chain between her fingertips and held the charm up to the light. On the back were two letters.
JT.

Susan clasped the heart in her hand and then carefully replaced the charm necklace back in the box and closed it.

Her attention shifted to the pictures. The pictures weren’t professional. They’d been snapped with her thirty-five millimeter camera that she’d bought in college. It wasn’t hard to date the images. One glance at the large, curly hairstyles, high-waist jeans, and open vests telegraphed the early nineties.

“No accounting for taste,” she murmured.

Carefully, she flipped through the stack of pictures that had never warranted a place in a real album. There were pictures of Susan and her brother at the football game. It had been a high school game and she’d gone not for the sports or the job but to see a man.

Susan had gone through this stack enough to know which picture followed the next and knew in three more images she’d see a picture of him. However, she didn’t quicken her pace as she studied one picture and moved it carefully to the bottom of the stack. What was the rush?

Another picture of her brother, sullen and unsmiling. Never smiling. Still to this day, he didn’t smile unless it suited him or promised profit.

Another picture of her. Slightly out of focus because her brother had taken the image. She’d had to coax and prod him to take it. “Jerk.”

Another picture . . . this one was just of the man she’d loved. This image was crystal clear because she’d planned to frame it and keep it at her bedside. She’d had such plans for them. And then, it had all gone sideways. He’d been shot and killed and she’d been unable to look at his picture for nearly a year. And when she’d been able to look at his face without crying, she couldn’t bring herself to frame the picture.

Susan traced the outline of her lover’s smiling face. The pain of his death no longer stabbed. It had softened to regrets and a few whispered
what ifs . . .

The next image coaxed a smile and more regrets than she’d anticipated. This image was of a young girl, just days after her fifth birthday. She had a wide grin that showed a full mouth of even, white baby teeth.

She’d loved that little girl. Loved seeing her, loved hearing about her days at kindergarten, loved buying her ice cream.

If there were any regret in her life, it was that she had not been able to love this child or shower her with the mothering she deserved. Even after all this time, tears filled her eyes, stinging as she struggled not to let them spill.

She retraced the pictures in their original order and carefully tucked them back in the box. As she replaced the box, she locked away her memories and regrets.

Shifting focus from what she couldn’t control, she focused on what she could control. Her job. Her work. She clicked on a light, moved directly toward her desk, and flipped on her computer.

If Susan was good at anything, it was unearthing the hardest-to-find facts. She opened a file and studied the sketch of the child Rick Morgan had given her today.

She stared at the initials, JT. Jenna Thompson. Detective Morgan had made mention that she’d come from Baltimore. Thompson. She searched Officer Jenna Thompson and found a few references to some of her forensic art.

Susan sat back in her home-office desk chair, her reflection catching in the computer screen. She touched feathers of deepening crow’s-feet around her eyes. Some would call her distinguished. Some might value her experience. But in the age-obsessed world of television she was in the process of doing the unthinkable. She was aging.

She took another sip of wine and scrolled through any reference containing Jenna Thompson. Other than scattered images of her work and a few passing mentions there was little on the officer.

Thompson.

Who did she know in Baltimore, Maryland? Almost all of her contacts were in Tennessee. And then she remembered the new reporter from the Washington, D.C., area. Carolyn March. The reporter was young and looking to move up the chain at the station. She’d hopped around a couple of television markets and, no doubt Nashville would be just one stop of many. Blond, ambitious, there was much to admire about the young reporter who, for some reason, irritated the hell out of Susan.

She dialed Carolyn’s number.

“Hello?”

“Carolyn, this is Susan Martinez in Nashville. We met last year at the conference in Las Vegas.” She smiled, hoping it reverberated in her voice.

“Hey, Susan. How are you?”

Susan picked up a pen and began to draw boxes on a scratch pad. “I have an East Coast question for you.”

“Sure.” Carolyn didn’t sound as bubbly and helpful as she was when the station brass lurked around at the conference, but she also wasn’t rude. Susan might not have many years left in front of the camera but she still had enough pull to do damage to an ambitious reporter.

“I’m looking for a contact in the Baltimore Police Department. I have questions about an officer. Know anyone?”

The rustle of papers sounded through the phone. “Try Derrick Preston. He works robbery. I doubt he remembers me but I interviewed him last year for a story.”

Susan scribbled down the number as Carolyn read it off. “Thanks.”

“So what’s the allure of Baltimore?”

Always looking for an angle on a story. Smart. Irritating. “Just a hunch. Thanks.”

Susan rang off and called Baltimore. A few more calls and she had located Derrick. Susan relied on the truth as much as possible. It was the best cover she’d ever found when she needed information. Susan gave Derrick the run-down on Jenna Thompson’s volunteer efforts to catch a child killer. That softened him enough and soon she knew what she needed to know about Jenna Thompson.

Back in the day, she’d been careful to hide her personal connection to the story, but now, she was considering playing it.

Rick Morgan approached the records department of the Nashville Police Department, knowing the guy working the night shift had been a friend of Buddy’s. The air was dank and thick in the basement offices, but the fluorescent light humming above was bright, leaving no shadow in any corner.

Rick knocked on the half-open door to Records and poked his head in. Sitting behind the desk was a tall, lean kid who looked fresh out of the academy. He wore blond hair short and his uniform was well starched and fit his trim body well.

“Where’s Ben?” Rick asked.

The officer stood, leaving an open magazine and a half-eaten roast beef sandwich on his desk. “He called in sick. I’m filling in. Officer Morgan, right?”

Rick smiled. “Right.”

“Can I help you, sir?”

“How’s it going down here?”

“Can’t complain.”

He’d have attempted small talk with Ben but the kid, well, he didn’t have a thing in common. Better to just cut to the chase. “I’m looking for an old file.”

“Sure, what do you want me to search?”

“Jenna Thompson. She’s about thirty and was born in the Nashville area. Your search would go back about twenty-five years because I know she left the area when she was about five.”

The kid scribbled down the name. “Anything else?”

“Just keep it to yourself. I don’t know what you’ll find, but I’d like to play the cards close until I know more.”

“Consider it done.”

“Thanks.”

The music in the bar pulsed loud. The bass of a guitar thumped. The honky-tonk was off the beaten path from Broadway and the tourists. This place was reserved only for locals who after a long day in a trivial job needed a place to have a few beers and blow off steam. The place teemed with frustrated men and women who took shit from bosses all day long. There was so much rage simmering in so many half-lidded gazes. So much frustration. So much desire to exact a little revenge against a world that had treated them so unfairly.

A man by the pool table cradled a bottle of beer close to his rounded belly. He wore a clean T-shirt but his jeans, held up by a large buckle that read CSA, were grungy and covered with construction dust. Dark hair slicked back into a low ponytail and thick steel-toed construction boots covered big feet.

The man’s name was Ford Wheeler. He wasn’t more than thirty, single, came to this bar almost nightly, and he always allowed his gaze to settle on a blond woman. No blonde in particular at first but in the last few weeks he’d fixated on a waitress.

The waitress was pretty enough. Not more than twenty, she had yet to earn the world-weary gaze of her older counterparts and smiled easily at her customers. Ford ignored the waitress. His thoughts were only for another woman.

Ford had confessed his desires after far too many beers. Over and over, he talked about dreams of tying a woman to a bed and standing over her, a gun pointed to her head.

Rising, it took only a few quick steps forward to gain Ford’s attention. “Good evening.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Just checking in.”

Ford dug his fingernail into the label of his beer bottle, scraping the paper away from the glass. He teemed with frustration, a volcano ready to explode. “I ain’t so good.”

“Why?”

He dropped his voice a notch and ducked his head a fraction. “I want to play and you won’t let me. I don’t understand why you’re making me wait.”

It wouldn’t take much to coax Ford into a play. Just a light push. Barely a nudge.

Reason shouted from the shadows, “This is a bad idea.”

Madness sipped beer, ignoring Reason and savoring the cold bitter taste as it washed down a dry throat. Normally, alcohol was out of the question but, tonight, the needs cut so sharply through bone and sinew, it took drink to dull them.

“You could have the waitress,” Madness said.

Ford looked up, startled, surprised his thoughts had been so transparent. “She’s not the one I really want. You know that. I like the fancy one you picked out.”

“I think it’s wise you stay away from that one.”

A scold deepened his forehead. “You don’t think I can handle her.”

Madness loved winding up the toys and watching them dance. “No, I don’t. Not now anyway.”

Ford frowned. “I can handle her. I’m ready.”

“But the waitress is well within possibilities.”

It would be so easy to create a scene with Ford and the waitress. So easy.

“I don’t want her.”

“She’s all we have right now.”

Ford glowered at the waitress. “I want the other one.”

“It’s my way or no way at all.”

“Okay.”

“Tomorrow?”

Ford hesitated. “Sure.”

Reason squirmed under the weight of Madness. “You wind him up and you can’t predict what he’ll do.”

Madness’s reckless spirit rejected Reason’s counsel.

Friday, August 18, 8
A.M.

Jenna rose with the rising sun. Too anxious to sleep or paint, she opted to take a long walk in the woods. Brush and leaves crunched under her booted feet as she made her way down the old path that the rental agent suggested had been an old Indian path.

The trail ended at a small river that twisted and cut through the woods. It had been a wet spring and summer and the water was high and fast. A couple of times, she’d been tempted to swim in the stream but had opted against it because of the water’s speed.

She sat for a long time on the river’s edge and allowed her eyes to close as she concentrated on the sound of the woods. But thoughts of Ronnie Dupree and his mother scattered whatever serenity she’d gathered. She just couldn’t believe a guy like Ronnie had shattered her life. His type crossed paths with the cops all the time. They were always stirring trouble and landing in jail. But to just walk into a home and kill everyone?

She’d bought the line that Ronnie had killed because of jealousy and insanity all her life. “Sometimes, bad things happen,” her aunt had once said. And she might have kept believing all that she’d been told, if not for the growing sense that Shadow Eyes was real.

The crack of a twig underfoot and the rustle of branches had her turning and automatically reaching for a sidearm that she no longer carried. Rick Morgan stood on the path.

He appeared relieved to have found her. “I thought I might find you down here.”

She rested hands on her hips. “How would you even know to look?”

He glanced around staring at the woods. “You know the history of your house?”

She nodded, remembering. “The homicide. Did you work it?”

“No. Deke did, but Tracker and I walked the land with him. We needed the exercise and we acted as a second set of eyes for him.”

“Did he solve the crime?”

His hair was damp as if he’d stepped from the shower and he smelled faintly of soap. “He did. The woman that lived here was killed because she had information the killer wanted.”

According to what she’d read, he’d omitted a world of details. “That information must have been something important.”

“It was.”

Twigs crunched under her feet as she stepped toward him. “Where’s Tracker?”

“I left him at the edge of the woods. Terrain’s a little rough on his hip.”

She moved toward him, negotiating the uneven rocks easily. “What about yours?”

The careless smile flashed. “Getting better every day. You come out here every day?”

“When I can. Clears my head. And I love open spaces.”

“I hear ya.” He slid his hand into his pocket. “Ready for Susan Martinez?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve given a couple of interviews before. Most of the questions are standard. Should be straightforward.”