Frankie watched her partner fumble in his jacket for a pen. He opened his memo book, wrote a few words, crossed them out and wrote again. His hand was shaking. The media was going to zero in on this scene, and Billy was in no shape to have a microphone stuck in his face.
“The watch commander is here,” she said. “I’ve contacted Deputy Chief Middlebrook’s office. The chief is doing a grip-and-grin at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Racquet Club. He’ll be here soon as he learns the victim is Saunders Lee’s daughter.”
Billy blinked a few times as if coming back to himself. “Right. There’s a handbag in the front seat. Check around the car’s interior for a weapon and ejected casings. I’ll search the trunk.”
She walked around the car and squatted beside the opened passenger’s side door. Tiny crystals sparkled on the handbag resting on the floor inside. She put on gloves and pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket to spread on the mat where she dumped the handbag’s contents—driver’s license, tube of lipstick, a smartphone, and at the bottom of the bag a pearl-handled derringer. She bent and sniffed the barrel. Not recently fired.
Placing a knee on the seat, she leaned in and used her phone to snap close-ups of the gunshot wound and bruised hand. She backed off for a couple of wide-angle shots then checked the photos. The ruined face and bloody gown made the shots look like a Wes Craven movie poster. Billy obviously cared about this woman. No wonder he was so upset.
She stepped away for a breath of fresh air, for some reason feeling a connection with this woman. They were close to the same age, both of them at the beginning of their careers. Lives of innocent people can be snatched away in an instant. That’s probably what happened here. She walked around to the driver’s side door. The dress looked like a Pat Kerr original, a Memphis designer who has an international reputation for creating wedding gowns from heirloom lace. Kneeling to bunch the skirt, she peered at the floorboard beneath the victim’s feet. No weapon there.
Stepping back she noticed the side zipper on the dress was halfway down. Did the victim leave the zipper undone to make getting in and out of the car easier or had she put on weight in the weeks since the final fitting?
She walked to where Billy was staring inside the open trunk, his hands in his pockets. His color was better. He seemed to have calmed down. Inside the trunk was a small Louis Vuitton suitcase with its lid up. A pink negligee lay on top. Frankie could smell the perfume.
“The trunk is empty except for this bag,” he said.
“There’s a derringer in her handbag. It hasn’t been fired.”
He nodded.
“You don’t seem surprised the victim was carrying.”
“Mississippi women carry pistols, even grandmothers. A .32 goes in the purse, a .357 under the car seat.”
“What are these women afraid of?” she asked.
“Not a damned thing. You grow up in the country, you’re comfortable with guns.”
She studied the negligee. “Looks like she packed for a honeymoon, yet she was supposed to have been married five weeks ago.”
“And no rings,” he said.
“No rings. Got any ideas?”
“First scenario. She was married sometime on Monday. The couple had a fight. She took off. She was texting or maybe she was drunk. She lost control of the car and ended up in the field. She called the guy to come get her. He parked on the road, walked in, and shot her. He walked out and drove away.”
“That doesn’t explain the bullet hole above her head.”
“Second idea. She had a passenger. They pulled over, had an argument. He pulled a gun and they struggled. That’s your bullet in the headliner. She hit the gas, ran into the gate, and drove into the field. He killed her with the second shot.”
“Try this one,” she said. “The zipper on the dress is undone. Someone came to her house, forced her to put on the dress, abducted, and killed her.”
“That’s possible. And there’s Hanson, but I have a hunch he didn’t do it.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s so damned sure of himself. He’s talking about collecting damages from the city, not beating a murder charge. He ripped off the money clip, got trapped on the roof, and realized the clip would send him back to Turney. He wiped his prints and tossed it.”
She marveled at how Billy relied on gut feeling to solve cases. Logic was her thing. They made a great team, except that she’d begun to feel cramped in her position as his understudy.
The chop of helicopter blades broke the air as Channel Five Traffic Scan flew south over the stalled traffic on Walnut Grove. It banked north and turned.
She looked at the line of cruisers and service vehicles on the road. “The pilot knows something’s up. He’s going to do a flyover. They’ll want footage for the morning broadcast.”
Billy pulled a rag from the trunk and tucked it around the license plate as the chopper approached. “The media will foam at the mouth soon as they know the victim is a Lee. We need a tent. And I want to notify her parents before they see her car on TV.”