The Wrong Side of Dead (7 page)

Unable to stand, Jess dropped to a knee and lowered her head, trying to stop the images from invading her mind. She forced herself to breathe, slow and easy, trying to quell a low and rumbling wave of nausea. She hated feeling this vulnerable…again.

Harper had nothing to do with the murder—but even as much as she wanted to clear him—Jess knew she had to take her investigation a step further. She had to hunt down the real killer. Whoever had done this had crossed her path, brutally taken a life, and framed a friend to get away with it.

And that was enough to really piss her off.

Jess left the motel office, knowing she’d hit another dead end. She drove the van from the motel parking lot and pulled onto a dark stretch of road, heading for home. It had been a long day, made worse by the deep exhaustion she felt in her bones and a troubled mind that wouldn’t quit.

She grappled with the horror of the bloodied room, unable to leave it behind.

The smell of violent death had embedded in her nostrils and permeated her clothes. And from the shadows inside the van, images from her past continued to assault her memory. Distant and muffled screams in the middle of the night, a crying child she couldn’t comfort, the heavy footsteps on wood that signaled more terror—all of these memories jutted from the gloom in strobe flashes. An unhealed wound exposed by her traumatized psyche.

With her thoughts scattered, she drove the murky two-lane highway of mostly farm country, barely noticing the yellow center lane whipping by. Switchgrass tossed in the breeze, and countless fence posts were caught in the funnel of pale light cast from her headlights. In the solitude, she let the disturbing surge of emotion settle upon her, an affliction that had grown far too familiar over the years.

Jess tried to distance herself from the past without much luck. To crush the trembles, her hands gripped the steering wheel too tight, her lifeline to the present.

Long ago, she had been encouraged to embrace the tragedy of her childhood as an affirmation of her strength, turning a negative into a positive as if it were that simple. After all, being abducted by a sexual predator and tortured hadn’t killed her, exactly. Surely it must have made her stronger, at least that was what others had told her time and time again.

If she’d survived the ordeal, she could endure and overcome the traumatic memories now. But that meaningless drivel came mostly from the many therapists who had placated her over the years, making her a pet project while she was under foster care with the state of Illinois after her rescue. Eventually, they moved on to other kids and left her to figure it out for herself, leaving her with nothing more than a Band-Aid fix for the equivalent of a hemorrhage to her soul.

In reality, she hated her weakness, something she hadn’t told anyone—not even Sam.

But after a quick glimpse in the rearview mirror, Jess caught something that forced her instincts to take over. A car in the distance. It appeared to be tailing her, staying far enough behind that she’d almost missed it. No headlights. Any normal person would have assumed the idiot had forgotten to flip on his lights, but Jess had developed a paranoid sixth sense over the years.

She hit the accelerator to see if she had company, testing her suspicions. When the car behind her picked up speed to match hers, Jess knew it wasn’t her imagination.

“Great, just great.”

She floored the gas pedal and put the blue monster through its paces, knowing it would be a challenge to stay ahead. Harper’s old van wasn’t built for speed. Jess craned her neck, looking for the lights of the nearest interstate over her shoulder. Making a last-minute decision, she hit the next turn a little too fast.

The tires squealed in protest, and the van lurched.

“Shit!” she cursed under her breath. The sudden move jostled her off the seat, straining the seat belt. But the car behind her kept pace.

Her eyes darted between the dark road ahead and her rearview mirror. She couldn’t see the tag or the make and model of the car, only an occasional glint off the dark windshield.

Safety in numbers, she needed to get to the interstate or a place she could lose her tail. Here in the open, she stood out. And she’d never outrun the guy. If the driver got close enough, he could shoot out a tire, run her off the road, or worse. And defending herself in this remote area would be tough.

“Damn it!” The heft of her Colt Python under her jacket gave her comfort, but not enough.

Not nearly enough.

Once she hit the gas, the car behind her sped up and closed the gap between them—giving deadly chase. Her van hit its limits, but it wasn’t enough. Bumper to bumper, her pursuer had no intention of playing it safe. If she got to the interstate, potential witnesses would complicate matters, and the driver had figured that out. He ramped up his game.

BANG!
The asshole behind the wheel gave her a love tap on the bumper, grinding metal on metal. It knocked her teeth shut and jolted her neck.

“What the hell…?” She shot a glance toward her mirrors, but the car swerved, not giving her a clear view.

Now the driver swung into the oncoming lane and hit the gas, passing on her left. In the dark, she saw nothing of the man inside, only heavily tinted windows on a dark sedan. She yanked the wheel to cut the bastard off. If he got beside her, he might fire a gun. She’d be a sitting duck.

She spotted the interstate ahead, not more than a few miles.

“Come on. Come on!” She urged the blue monster on, white-knuckling the wheel and keeping an eye on her mirrors.

All she had to do was stay ahead of the jerk. If she got to the freeway, she’d have a chance.

The sedan veered into the other lane again. This time, the driver gained the advantage, pulling alongside her. She clenched her teeth and kept driving, focusing on what lay ahead. A flashing red light marked the intersection of the farm road with the freeway. The entrance ramp was a hard right. She wasn’t sure the blue whale could take it.

“Damn it.”

And worse, she caught motion from the corner of her eye. The bastard was rolling down his window. And from the shadowy interior she saw the murky silhouette of a man raising a weapon. He was going to shoot. And with the turn up ahead, she’d have to slow down, making her an easier target.

“Oh, shit!”

Precious seconds. She had run out of time. Only one option remained.

Jess took a risk. She yanked the steering wheel left and collided with the sedan.
To hell with being a victim!
The crunch of metal sounded like the high-pitched grind of nails on a chalkboard. On impact, she sent the sedan hurtling for a ravine to the left. Traveling at high speed, the car went sailing over a ditch and bellied out on the other side.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” she muttered as she hit the brake to slow down.

Jess made the turn onto the entrance ramp, watching over her shoulder as the sedan barreled for a wall, struggling for control. The vehicle scraped the embankment, sending up sparks like a Roman candle on steroids.

Once she got on an open road with streetlights, she took a ragged breath, her nerves catching up. Looking for Desiree had made her a target. But if she wanted to help Seth, she couldn’t stop at the first sign of trouble.

“Damn it, Harper! What the hell did you get into?”

The next morning

“Yeah, I need to speak to Dispatch please.” Jess gulped more lukewarm coffee and rubbed the back of her sore neck. “Yeah, I’ll hold.”

Last night’s car chase had left Jess dealing with a stiff neck and aching muscles. And to add insult to injury, she hadn’t slept at all, not with Harper in jail. For her to catch a few Z’s felt like a complete waste of time and a betrayal of her solidarity with his predicament. And after seeing the remnants of the bloody crime scene, she was afraid the powerful images would stir her own demons.

Sleep had never been much of a friend.

“Dispatch. Arnie here.”

“Hey, Arnie. I was wondering if you could help a girl out.” She told him what she wanted and settled down for a wait after he put her on hold.

When he came back onto the line, he said, “Nope. I got nothing on that. Sorry, lady.”

“Yeah, thanks.” She hung up, striking out again.

Jess took a break from her morning phone calls and dumped her stale coffee in favor of fresh brewed. With coffee percolating, she thought about last night, an odd cluster of events, especially more surreal in the light of day.

Her trip to Dirty Monty’s had started it all—setting her on a course with a major pack of scumbags—a collision course that earned Seth’s blue whale a few more scrapes. But at the crack of dawn—after coming up empty on finding Harper’s ’65 Mustang at the motel parking lot last night—she throttled her mind into overdrive, running various scenarios through her plausibility meter. And her brain hadn’t stopped since.

According to that sleazoid bartender, Harper had made it to Dirty Monty’s, but Jess wondered how he had gotten there. Sometimes even the small details might be significant in the right context.

She hadn’t found his Mustang parked near the bar or at the crime scene. If the real killer had taken it, that would have been a bonehead maneuver. The cops would be looking for it so crime scene techs could search for more damning evidence to lock Harper away for good. With a viable suspect in hand, CPD might not search too hard for the car. But if trace evidence of the murdered woman could be found in the vehicle, anyone caught with it could be hauled in for questioning as an accomplice.

With Harper remaining tight-lipped about where he lived, the police might not find his car anytime soon. Stalling the cops on the case didn’t bother her. But with Harper having major gaps in his memory about what had happened, he couldn’t even help himself—or her. The whereabouts of his car was a loose thread she couldn’t let go, but maybe she didn’t have to. She had another option to explore.

What if Harper hadn’t used his car at all?

Already on her second pot of coffee, she’d hit the yellow pages since dawn, calling cab companies operating in South Chicago, playing a hunch. If her boy genius had used a taxi, it would satisfy her curiosity on Harper’s Mustang. But even better, she’d have a shot at finding out where the boy lived. Cab companies kept record of the location where fares originated.

“And me outsmarting you, my stubborn brainy friend, would be priceless,” she muttered, pouring a fresh cup of coffee. But the ring of her cell phone intruded upon the solitude of her morning. She recognized the number.

“Hey, Sammie. How goes the war against crime?”

“We could use reinforcements. That’s why you’re on the front line.” She heard the smile in her friend’s voice. “I was calling to let you know that the medical examiner got an ID on the dead woman off her fingerprints, and we got lucky. She had an arrest record.” Sam went into the woman’s list of offenses, but when she was done, her friend added, “She doesn’t sound like anyone Seth would hang with, but what do you think?”

After hearing about the victim, Jess had a bad feeling.

“You know, Sam, the kid’s got baggage. And he’s not real chatty about it, but from what I’ve seen, you’re right. Someone like that doesn’t fit. What’s her name?”

Jess heard the rustle of paper in the background before Sam got back on the line. With every second it took, her gut twisted and tightened into a knot.

“Her name was Amanda Vincent, street name Desiree,” Sam said.

Hearing that name jolted Jess wide-awake, confirming her fear. Harper had claimed not to know the dead woman. Had he lied to her? Why had he given Mandy’s name and description—sending her on a wild-goose chase to find a dead woman?

Her hinky barometer crossed into the red zone—none of this made sense. Gut instinct forced her to keep her suspicions to herself. She didn’t have enough to tell Sam, at least not yet. But with the evidence stacked against her boy, Jess didn’t like the odds. Harper needed someone on his side. And tag, she was it.

She hoped Harper had kept his mouth shut when the cops questioned him again. By now, the detective in charge would have done that. With CPD having the woman’s identity, they would have started a push for a confession. Any connection Harper had with the woman would be fair game and used against him. And if her boy genius had flinched when he heard the woman’s name, the police would have seen it. His reaction would have been like blood in the water with great white sharks circling.
A feeding frenzy.

“Can you arrange for me to see Harper again, Sam?”

This time Seth
had
to talk to her.

Cook County Jail
Chicago

“I didn’t lie to you, I swear,” Seth insisted, sitting behind the Plexiglas of CPD’s lockup. “I can’t believe she’s…dead.” He looked washed-out, and the dark circles under his eyes looked stark.

“But you had me chasing a blonde. And Sam just told me Desiree was a brunette. What gives?” Jess asked, putting her elbows on the table.

“Last I’d seen Mandy, she
was
a blonde.” He shut his eyes, looking tired. His lower lip trembled, but he covered that up by running both hands over his face. “And she was breathing.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t get a good look at the body. It was dark and…I just couldn’t. Too much blood, and her face was…messed up.”

Jess sat in silence, watching her friend. He didn’t act or talk like a stone-cold killer. Mandy’s death had taken a toll on him. Overnight, he looked older than his years, his innocence gone. But maybe Jess didn’t know him as well as she thought.

“I had gotten through to her…finally. At least I thought I had.” A tear trailed down his cheek, but he couldn’t look her in the eye. Under the fluorescent light of the jail, the wetness was robbed of its sheen. “When she let her guard down, you could see…”

When she realized he wasn’t going to finish—that he was mainly coming to terms with what had happened to Mandy in his own mind—she pushed him for an answer.

“See what, Harper?”

“She had the eyes of a little girl under all that makeup.” A sad smile came and went. “She let me see her scrub faced one day. She was really pretty, you know? The kind of pretty that comes from inside.” He swept a finger toward his face. “And she had freckles across her nose. She covered them with makeup, but she let me see them…once.”

Mandy Vincent had only been twenty-two years old when she died. The reality of a life cut short hit Jess hard. Considering her own twisted childhood, the same could have happened to her.

“You don’t have to tell me this, but did you have feelings for the girl, Seth?”

Jess thought she knew the answer. Harper had secrets, sure. And he certainly was complicated. But when it came to his heart—and the people who mattered most in his life—he appeared to be an open book.

“I just felt…sorry for her. And besides, she had a boyfriend. Jason somebody.” He shrugged. “The first time he saw us together, he misread it and got all bent. That was why we arranged places to meet, away from him.”

“Do you think he could’ve found out about you and Des…” She corrected herself. Out of respect for Seth’s feelings, she wouldn’t call the girl Desiree anymore, at least not in his presence. “—I mean, you and Mandy? Killing someone with a knife is an act of passion. Maybe he did it.”

Jess wondered if Harper had said anything to the cops about the boyfriend. Anyone hearing his story would assume Harper had gotten involved in a love triangle gone bad. It wouldn’t exonerate him, not hardly. Checking out the boyfriend could turn up something usable in his defense or give a motive to the DA. She’d talk to Sam about it, to see what the cops knew on the guy.

“I don’t know, Jess. We never really talked about him. I was trying to get her clean. The crank was eating her alive, from the inside out. She already had hep C from sharing dirty needles. Her liver was a fuckin’ time bomb.”

“Oh man, Harper. I had no idea.” Hearing him talk about Mandy raised questions in her mind. Not about the girl, but about the reason Harper had chosen her for his personal project. “How did you meet her? When did all this start?”

Harper slumped back in his chair with crossed arms. Defensive with a capital D.

“I can’t talk about that.” He shook his head. “But Jess, if you wanna be my friend, don’t judge her. I couldn’t take that coming from you. Just trust me when I say, Mandy had plenty of reasons for the way she turned out. Some people aren’t strong enough to deal, that’s all.”

Jess heard the truth in what he said about judging people. She’d been on the receiving end of criticism plenty of times. But for her, Mandy had crossed a line. It was one thing to screw up your own life, but to take someone else with you was inexcusable.

To say Mandy had made bad decisions in her life was an understatement of mega proportions. Hooking up with a psychopathic jerk wad with a penchant for sharp objects could have been just one on a long list. She had ruined her life, but to play a hand in stealing the rest of Seth’s wasn’t right. Jess had sympathy for what her gullible boy genius had tried to do for this messed-up girl, but she found it hard to muster any sympathy until she knew more about her.

“Mandy got caught on the wrong side of dead, Harper. Her life was doing a 360 down the commode. You were only trying to throw her a lifeline. I get that, but the cops have tunnel vision. You being found with her gave them a slam-dunk case. They’re not gonna believe that you were only trying to help her.”

“Help? She’s still dead, Jessie.” He shook his head, chin low.

“Yeah, and you’re still screwed.”

“Thanks for the update.”

“I just want you to start caring what happens, Seth. To you.”

Harper looked too fragile for Jess to say what was really on her mind—that his so-called friend had probably come close to destroying him. Even sporting a morgue Y-incision with her chest splayed like a lab rat, the girl still might take him down.

For some, misery loved company—even in death.

“So I guess that’s it.” He shrugged, defeat settling on his face. “The cops are gonna get me on this, aren’t they?”

Jess didn’t have much to lift Harper’s spirits, but something Nadir Beladi said last night made her think.

Whoever Desiree was before, she isn’t now. She is no longer your concern.
Had the smoker known about Mandy being dead before the story had appeared in the papers?

Plus, his beefy sidekick had been too quick with a knife. After he tried to bully her, imagining the bastard using his blade on a woman wasn’t much of a stretch. Maybe Mandy had threatened Beladi’s livelihood. After all, he’d been willing to cut her up for simply asking questions about Mandy. What did the girl know—being an insider to his dealings—that put a target on her back?

Jess had to get the cops to direct their investigative energy in another direction.
Any direction.
The cops would be building a case against Harper, compiling evidence for the DA to proceed. If she cast doubt on Seth’s case—giving them a believable motive on anyone else—he might have a shot at bail. For them to drop the charges now was too much to ask, but that would eventually be the general idea.

“Don’t give up on me, Harper.” She grinned. “You gotta have faith.”

“I do have faith in you, Jessie. And thanks.”

“Well, I owe you one”—she shrugged—“or six.”

After coercing a faint smile from him, she hit Seth with an unexpected question.

“Why did you take a cab to Dirty Monty’s?” It was a bluff. Pretending to know more than she did, Jess stared him down and saw that her question had hit home, sort of. At least it got Harper thinking.

“A cab? I don’t remember—” He struggled for glimpses of memory. “But I guess I could have. I grab a taxi when I know I’ll be drinking.”

She had to smile at the kid. He hadn’t seen the irony in what he admitted.

“God, Harper. You’re priceless.” When he scrunched his face in confusion, she filled him in on the joke. “For cryin’ out loud, you even drink responsibly. How could anyone think you hacked a woman to death?”

“Promise me you won’t serve as my character witness.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I’m makin’ my way down a list of cab companies. If a driver remembers you, it could help build a timeline for that night. But I’m letting you know now that I plan to ask the cabby where he picked you up. You got a problem with that?”

She saw by his reaction, the kid knew what that meant.

“I need to make a phone call, Jess.”

“Are you finally contacting a lawyer? If you need a name, I can check around, give you a good referral. You really shouldn’t let them assign you a public defender.”

“No, this is personal.”

Harper was done answering questions. She saw it in his eyes. He’d made a decision, and he wouldn’t share it with her. Seth had allowed her into his life in the past, but this time he chose to keep where he lived a secret—even from her.

Keeping his secret—and protecting someone else besides Mandy—was more important than he was.

Seth never thought he’d be on the wrong side of jail bars. And the reality of his situation made his stomach hurt.

Down the hall, a buzzer sounded, and a door slammed with a clang. Footsteps echoed and intensified as someone came closer. A dour-faced jailer stopped at his cell and escorted him down a hallway to a larger room with one phone on a far wall. Other prisoners stood in line. He kept his head down and didn’t make eye contact, but they knew he was fresh meat and taunted him until they lost interest.

The rules for use of the phone were posted in more than one language. All prisoners had access to it during limited times of day. If he didn’t make it through the line, he’d have to wait for the next time period. Since his call was not considered confidential or to a legal advisor, he had no right to privacy. His call would be monitored. Knowing this, he chose to call someone else, someone who would intervene.

And Harper prayed the man would.

When he got to the front of the line—with all eyes on him—Seth worked through the operator to place the collect call. On the other end of the line, a man with a low, gravelly voice picked up the phone. He acted as if he had expected the call and accepted the charges.

“Seth, is it really you?” the man asked after the operator got off the line.

He shut his eyes tight for an instant, wishing the call hadn’t been necessary—not like this. Seth gripped the phone and realized he was holding his breath. Finally, he gulped air and got on with it.

“I need to reach him. It’s urgent.”

Silence. For a moment, he didn’t know if the man would speak or hang up.

“Why haven’t you called before now? He’s been waiting.”

Seth lowered his head and hugged the phone to his ear, saying, “I know.”