Three in the morning Billy and two night shift detectives sat at their desks in the squad room, the click of their keyboards and the occasional cough the only disturbances. Frankie left after one o’clock with the Adams files under her arm. He worried she might get sidetracked with the cold case but decided not to bring it up after her skirmish with Vanderman. She was going to make mistakes, not because she cut corners—there was nothing imprecise about Frankie—but because she believed she had all the answers. It’s important to control the need to be right. Most of the time you aren’t.
He’d stayed at his desk to review the neighborhood canvass reports. One woman said she’d seen Sharma’s Escalade parked on the street in the middle of the day three houses down from Caroline’s. It stayed there for about forty-five minutes. Billy figured that was the day Sharma had entered Caroline’s house looking for proof she’d been cheating on him. Motive isn’t a legal element of a crime, but it’s a big part of the story, something he always looked at. The neighbor said she’d left a note in Caroline’s mailbox. If Caroline kept the note, it was a piece of physical evidence that would impress the hell out of a jury.
Physical evidence reports had begun to trickle in. The prints CSU lifted had matched Caroline, Roscoe Hanson, and the park ranger. Everything else, including latents from the passenger’s side door handles, was unusable. The techs took soil samples from the field and made casts of eleven shoe impressions. A footwear examiner would compare those to any evidence they submitted from suspects. The examiner would then report his conclusions as a match, inconclusive, or elimination.
CSU had recovered blue fibers stuck in the fabric of the driver’s seat protector. The same fibers were found in the lace on the back of Caroline’s dress. Had the fibers been on the seat protector and contaminated her dress? Or had she been wearing something over the dress sometime that evening?
He made sure Frankie had been copied on all physical evidence reports before moving on to Caroline’s appointment schedule.
Her assistant had included a profile of clients listed on the calendar. Most were wealthy couples over the age of fifty. He would pass the calendar to another detective to review, and he would interview clients who’d been in contact with Caroline the day she was murdered.
His last act was to text Frankie and say he’d be back at seven in the morning.
On the street he bought a Commercial Appeal from the sidewalk box. The headline read: “Bizarre Murder of Socialite Attorney.”
The article gave Caroline’s full name and cause of death as gunshot wound. The reporter went into her relation to the Lee Law Firm and the prominence of the Lee family in the city. The “bizarre” reference in the headline was about the bison attack on Hanson. The last line mentioned Caroline’s engagement to “highly regarded neurosurgeon, Dr. Raj Sharma, who had not returned the reporter’s calls.” Perfect. The article would turn up the heat on the doctor.
Billy folded the newspaper and drove to the barge, fighting to keep his eyes open. He drank milk from the carton while standing in front of the refrigerator and then slept on top of the covers.
Wake from river traffic rocked the barge until the alarm went off at 6:15 am. In the shower, he started with the water as hot as he could stand it then ran it cold, letting the jets pound his face and chest. That’s when a memory came to him so clear it played like a movie.
It was a Saturday afternoon, mid October. He was fourteen at the time and spent every Saturday ringing up tickets at the diner’s register, wiping tables, and washing dishes. Mr. Lee and Uncle Kane were having their talk at the table by the diner’s front window. Five kids—three boys and two girls—had gone outside to the picnic table to eat their pie and ice cream. He remembered stepping outside with a load of trash and noticing the three boys trooping across the field to the train tracks that ran across the back of the property. The four o’clock Illinois Central was rolling past with boxcars, tankers, flat beds, and cattle cars. One boy stopped to pick up a stick and brandished it like a sword. The others marched across the field toward the train, the smell of burning leaves hanging in the air. He would’ve given anything to be one of them. Free.
He was rinsing out a mop when he noticed the girl with the dark hair seated at the picnic table with a book propped in front of her. Caroline was picking blackberries from the bramble growing at the edge of the parking lot. The dark-haired girl closed her book and walked to the car, calling something to Caroline. Caroline answered and raised both hands cupped full of berries. Then she turned to him, her face golden in the afternoon light. That was the image he would always hold on to. Caroline lifting the berries for him to see as if she’d known he was watching.
She was standing near the opening of an animal trail used by coyote and fox to get to a creek in the backwoods. A movement caught his eye where the trail broke through the undergrowth. A big raccoon lurched into the open. It stumbled and flipped on its back, paws shuddering with spasms, jaws snapping. The coon rolled up on all fours and staggered toward Caroline in a sideways crabwalk. A city girl, she stared at the coon not recognizing the symptoms of rabies. He jumped off the porch and ran toward the coon, swinging the mop and yelling. Caroline, finally understanding, bolted for the picnic table. His uncle Kane had come running out the front door with his .45 revolver. He shot the raccoon dead.
Billy shaved, dressed, brewed coffee, and went out on the aft deck to watch the dying moon spin its way down to the western horizon. The woman in the Camaro and the golden girl he’d watched picking blackberries were the same, only this time he hadn’t been there to protect her.
His mobile lit up. He expected it to be Middlebrook, but it was the top cop calling, Director Jefferson Davis.
“Sergeant Able, my phone rang last night until ten o’clock. The mayor said he’s getting the same kind of heat from important people—bankers, lawyers, and country club fat cats. They want the person responsible for the murder hauled in front of a firing squad by tonight. I assured them the investigation was our number one priority. That shut them down temporarily. What’s your operating theory?”
“We’re looking hard at Miss Lee’s former fiancé, Dr. Raj Sharma.”
“Christ almighty. The doctor who heads up Bathe Neuro Clinic?”
“Yes, sir. Miss Lee broke their engagement right before the wedding. The doctor was humiliated. He started harassing her. She was about to take out a protective order against him when she was murdered.”
“My God. Have you talked to Sharma?”
“He’s hiding behind Jerry Vanderman. I’ll try to get some answers today.”
“Not with Vanderman on board. What about that parolee you caught at the scene?”
“He says he happened on the car by accident, and a bison trapped him there. We’ve got no physical evidence to prove different. We’ll have to cut him loose later today. In my opinion, Sharma is our guy.”
Davis let several seconds pass before he spoke. “I’m leaving this in your hands. I expect you to bring charges sooner rather than later.”