Inside her fourteenth-floor apartment above the Stone Arch Bridge, Tommy donned her Twins hat, flipped the channel to the game, and poured a generous slug of whiskey into a ceramic mug. Only after she downed that and poured another did she flop on her couch and put her feet up on the coffee table strewn with magazines.
But as Tommy watched the game, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from wandering to Belinda. Why had her old friend called her? If the body wasn’t Belinda, why had she flaked at the last minute? Why hadn’t she called to cancel their meeting? Something in Belinda’s voice had seemed off. Was she scared? Worried? And more importantly, if the body was Belinda, why on earth would someone want her dead?
Tommy hadn’t seen or heard from Belinda since they both graduated from school ten years ago. They’d become friends in junior high school and remained close until their junior year when Belinda made the cheerleading squad and Tommy didn’t.
That was the same year Tommy ran away from home. It was an easy decision. If Tommy’s mom wanted to stick around and get the crap beat out of her, then fine, but Tommy was never going to let a man hit her ever again.
By the time Tommy turned seventeen, she’d earned a black belt in karate to guarantee that. On her eighteenth birthday, she’d reluctantly let her mom talk her into coming back home for some cake. But when she walked in the house her mother was dead. Within the hour, her father was behind bars for the murder.
Of course, now Tommy blamed herself for her mother’s death. If she had stayed living at home maybe she could have saved her mother from her father’s drunken rage. If it hadn’t been her birthday, her mother wouldn’t have convinced her to come home. If she hadn’t been coming home that day, maybe whatever had set her father off wouldn’t have happened and her mother would still be alive right now.
After high school, Belinda had left for some fancy college on the East Coast. With her fancy friends, Tommy thought. Tommy had to admit it still smarted a bit to remember how quickly Belinda had replaced her. Once Belinda made the cheerleading squad, she was too busy with her new, rich cheerleader friends to spend time with Tommy.
Tommy supposed cheerleaders must have been more fun to hang out with than she’d been—the delinquent daughter of a murdered mother with a dad in jail for homicide. After running away from home, Tommy spent her senior year crashing on couches at party houses, trying to study enough to graduate from high school, and fitting in as many waitressing shifts as she could. In a way, Tommy didn’t blame Belinda for turning away.
Thoughts of the past made Tommy slant her eyes at the urn on her desk. It was out of place there among the jumble of office supplies and photo equipment, but Tommy didn’t know what to do with it.
Don’t worry, mama, someday I’ll find you a home. It was the least she could do for her mother. No wonder Tommy was so unlucky in love. Who could love someone who abandoned their own mother to the hands of an abusive husband and let her die?
Lately, Tommy had felt a small ache in her chest every time she was around a small child. The yearning was especially poignant whenever she saw a baby. But Tommy knew she could never take care of a helpless child. Her behavior with her mother had proven that.
The ringing of her cell phone interrupted Tommy’s thoughts. She gave the phone a glance. Parker. Forget that. He was like a heat-seeking missile. He knew she was upset about Belinda. He probably figured it was a prime opportunity to comfort her a.k.a. get inside her pants. Or else, he got Belinda’s identity confirmed and wanted to grill her for some more information.
Parker was simple to figure out. He basically cared about two things: The crime beat and getting laid. Sometimes his simplistic approach to life was appealing. Tommy wished she could be like that: Just not care.
She’d accepted Parker—and his pride at being shallow—but tonight his blatant self-interest was utter crap.
During the seventh inning stretch, Tommy stood up and walked over to the bank of windows overlooking the Mississippi. Across the river, she could see the lights of the Guthrie Theater. To her right, the Hennepin Bridge loomed with its arching spans lit up in the night sky. At the far end, the vintage-looking Grain Belt brewery sign glowed.
To her left, she could see a rainbow of lights on the bottom of the new I35W Bridge. She could never look at that bridge without remembering the day it collapsed during rush hour, sending thirteen people plunging to their deaths, and injuring another 145. Her photos that day had gone viral: shots of bleeding children rescued from a school bus that tottered on the edge of the abyss; a man clinging to the side of the bridge by his bloody fingernails; a woman keeled over in grief when she arrived at the scene to find her husband’s car with their baby inside among the crushed vehicles.
Tommy was one of the first photographers on the scene. Even now, years later, she still occasionally woke in the dark from nightmares, haunted by the sounds of screaming children and images of bodies in crunched cars.
Tonight, the bridge seemed serene. Across the river, the Minneapolis skyline, with its towering skyscrapers dotted with small yellow lights, sent a lump of love into her throat. She would never grow tired of that view. It always filled her with a strange mixture of excitement and peace. That’s why she drove a fifteen-year-old vehicle, bought her clothes at the thrift store, and brought leftovers for lunch most days — all to afford this view and the way it made her feel.
Even so, if her beloved grandmother hadn’t died and left her enough to make a huge down payment, Tommy would have never been able to afford her tiny apartment. Or had enough to study photography at the U of M, either.
Finally, when she’d looked everywhere else, Tommy cast her gaze directly below, to the Stone Arch Bridge. The police had finally cleared out a few hours before, taking down the yellow crime scene tape that had closed off the wooden stairway.
If only she’d been on time, she would have met Belinda. And if that body had been Belinda, maybe she’d have been able to save her life.
She had said as much to her friend Carla back at the paper that afternoon.
“Or maybe if you’d been on time, you’d be dead, too,” Carla had said in her typical no-nonsense manner.
Tommy hadn’t thought of that. But she couldn’t imagine any reason anyone would want Belinda dead. Sure, her high school friend had been a bit silly, a bit frivolous, but she didn’t have a mean bone in her body.
Tommy finally admitted she couldn’t wait any longer. Reluctantly, she dialed Parker.
“Did the coroner’s office give you next of kin?” she said as soon as he picked up.
“I see,” Parker said with a long pause. “You’ll talk to me on the phone when I have information you want.”
“Is it Belinda Carter?”
He paused and she knew. She didn’t wait for him to confirm it. “Give me her next of kin.”
Parker didn’t argue. “Hold on.” Tommy heard the rustling of papers. “Okay. Survived by her husband of Syracuse, New York, Jason Carter. Mother in Chicago, apparently where she rented the car.”
“Kids?”
“Nope.”
“Did you talk to her husband?”
“No, he’s on a plane on his way out here as we speak. I found out that Mr. and Mrs. Carter were big shots in New York City. Google them. You’ll see. Socialite types who like to attend fancy schmancy fundraisers. They especially liked to contribute to politicians. Republican ones. They were out here last weekend for the Republican National Caucus. They first stopped to visit mom in Chicago and then rented a car and drove here.”
“You mean they were both here together two days ago?”
“Yep, we found a file photo of them at the Governor’s mansion drinking Dom Perignon.”
“Huh? Wonder why Belinda stayed in town and he didn’t? And why would socialites rent a car and drive from Chicago instead of just fly?”
“Good questions. Hey, this might be hard for you to hear, but it’s going to be in my story tomorrow, so I’d rather you hear it from me: autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow, but my coroner’s office source says Mrs. Carter died of blunt force trauma to the … face. Pretty bad. It’s going to be a closed casket.”
“Wow,” Tommy said letting out a big sigh. Blunt force trauma to the face? Usually you hear blunt force trauma to the head. Not face. Someone must have been pissed and taken it out on her personally. A stranger wouldn’t bash someone’s face in with that much violence. Just like police knew a victim with numerous stab wounds was most likely killed by someone they knew. For there to be that much violence, there had to be emotion, some passion, behind the crime.
“So, need some company?” Parker’s words interrupted her thoughts.
Boy, he doesn’t give up easy. Probably why he’s such a good reporter. “Nice try, Romeo, but you’ll have to do better than that.”