I spent the rest of the day knocking on doors, talking to my neighbors, and trying to track down missing persons. No further tornadoes hit the county, but several severe thunderstorms rolled through, causing everyone to flee for cover. St. Augustine lost four people. We got lucky. If that tornado had hit the plant at Ross Kelly Farms, Reid Chemical, or Waterford College, we would have been looking at hundreds of casualties instead of four. As wrong as it felt to be thankful for four dead people, I was.
My adrenaline faded as the sun went down, leaving exhaustion in its wake. I ended my shift twelve hours after it started and drove home to my ancient two-story farmhouse. The man who had built my house had ordered it from a Sears catalog in 1913 and had lived in it with his family until he died. When my realtor showed it to me, its most recent inhabitant had been a family of raccoons.
The real estate listing had called it a teardown on a great piece of property, but it wasn’t a teardown at all. Where others saw a cracked foundation and shattered windows, I saw a home waiting for someone to restore it. I saw something broken that I could make beautiful again. I liked that.
As I stepped onto my porch, I whistled and waited for my dog. The tornado had come nowhere near my house, but thunderstorms had left branches and leaves strewn across the front yard. Roger, my aging hundred-and-forty-pound bullmastiff, trotted from his house in the backyard to greet me.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said, kneeling and reaching to his cheek and ear for a good scratch. He barked a contented bark and wagged his tail. I wouldn’t be alive if not for Roger. Many people say that about their loved ones, but in this case, it was a literal truth. “Your breath stinks, dude. What’s Susanne been feeding you?”
As if in response, he licked my face. I laughed and ran my hand down his back. I’d worry about getting him cleaned up later. For now, I was too tired to care.
“Come on in,” I said, fishing in my purse for my house keys. My house wasn’t much, but it was all mine. When I bought it, I ripped down the old plaster and replaced both the plumbing and drain systems and put in thick insulation. Now, I lived in a comfortable home. Or at least the first floor of a comfortable home. I had yet to touch the second floor beyond tearing out the plaster and ripping out the knob-and-tube wiring. One step at a time.
The moment I got in, I flopped on the couch and pulled out my cell phone to call Susanne, my neighbor, and make sure she was okay and to thank her for looking after Roger while I was at work. That done, I called somebody I should have called hours ago.
Julia Green hadn’t given birth to me, but she was my mom. She and her husband had adopted me and given me my first real home when I was sixteen years old. I loved them both.
“Hey, Mom, it’s Joe,” I said. “I finally got in.”
“I’m glad. You have any damage to your house?”
“The yard’s a mess, but the house is okay,” I said, yawning. “How are you and Dad getting along?”
“Haven’t killed each other yet, but it’s been close,” she said. “Retirement’s harder than I thought.”
Mom and I didn’t talk long, but the conversation grounded me and reminded me of all the good things in my life. My adopted family was my anchor in the world. Without them, I became unmoored. With them, I had stability and love. Meeting them had been the best thing to happen to me in my entire life.
After I hung up, I ate Chinese leftovers in my fridge, showered until the hot water ran out, and then crashed into my bed, where I slept the dreamless sleep of the exhausted.
As was his custom, Roger woke me up the next morning by stretching and shaking my bed so violently it felt as if I had just been through a minor earthquake. As my eyes opened, he left his spot at my feet and licked my face. I pushed him away.
“Enough, butthead,” I said, sitting up and stretching. Roger’s face was so close to mine, his hot breath hit my cheek. I pushed him away again. “I’m awake. Go get your bone. It’s in the kitchen.”
I watched and waited as he lumbered toward the stairs I had built for him. Even just a year ago, he would have jumped down from the bed and sprinted through the house like a crazy man at the mere mention of his bone. Now, age had forced him to use the stairs. Time slowed us all down, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch.
I closed my eyes and sank into the pillow as the dog slurped his water in the kitchen. Roger still drank pretty well, but in the past four weeks, he had stopped eating well. When he was young, he’d scarf his food down within seconds of me putting it in the bowl. Now, it might take him all day to finish his breakfast. In the past week, he had even started to skip meals. My vet said he didn’t have long left. It hurt to admit that, but it was true. Nothing good lasted forever.
Muscles all over my body ached, and my forearm had a purple and black bruise the size of a golf ball. It hurt, but it didn’t throb. I swung my legs off the bed and glanced at my alarm. It was a little before seven, which meant I had gotten about ten hours of sleep. I could have used another ten, but I doubted my boss would have appreciated me showing up that late to work.
I got ready for the day, and then I walked Roger to Susanne’s house before going to work.
My department operated out of a historic Masonic temple the county had purchased a few years ago. The building held the county’s small forensics lab, six cells for prisoners, and desks and private offices for the county’s forty-five officers. At the moment, we used most of the second and all the third floor for storage, but the county promised us that we’d eventually get funding to renovate the entire structure so we could use the spaces for interrogations or community policing functions. I wasn’t holding my breath.
When I got in, Trisha, our day-shift dispatcher, locked eyes on me from her desk in the entryway.
“Boss wants a status update on your Jane Doe investigation. There’s somebody with him from Ross Kelly Farms. They’re in the conference room.”
I stopped in my tracks and sighed. “It’s too late to call in sick, isn’t it?”
“Just a little,” said Trisha, winking. “Happy Monday!”
I grunted.
“Yep. Happy Monday.”
Trisha laughed as I walked past her desk to the department’s bullpen in back. The Masons who owned the building before us had used the room as an auditorium for gatherings and meetings, but when the department moved in, we removed all the seating and put in a cubicle farm. With ornate stonework and moldings throughout, it was a beautiful room. Unfortunately, the cubicle partitions, wooden desks, and buzzing phone lines robbed it of some of its grandeur.
I crossed the floor and walked to the first-floor conference room, where I found my boss and a tall, Hispanic man who looked as if he were in his mid-forties. They were talking to one another as I entered.
“Hey, Harry,” I said. Harry Grainger, St. Augustine County’s recently appointed sheriff, glanced up from a document he was reading. Crow’s-feet ran from the corners of Harry’s deeply inset eyes nearly to his scalp line, making him look older than his sixty-one years. His hair was curly, gray, and thick, and his hands were big enough to palm a basketball. The County Council had appointed him sheriff two weeks ago after the previous sheriff, Travis Kosen, retired. I liked Harry. He stayed out of my way and gave me the resources I needed when I needed them. He had only been my boss for two weeks, but I couldn’t ask for more.
“Morning, Joe,” he said, glancing to the man beside him. “This is Lorenzo Molina. He’s the chief of security at Ross Kelly Farms. He’s here because your Jane Doe’s body was found on company property.”
I crossed the room to shake his hand. “Detective Joe Court. Nice to meet you.”
“You, too, miss,” he said, smiling. Few wrinkles marred the olive-colored skin of his square face, and very little gray flecked his black hair. He would have been handsome had it not been for his cold, black eyes. After shaking my hand, he looked at Harry. “Unless there’s anything else, I’ll head back to work. You have my contact information if you need to get in touch with me.”
“Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Molina,” said Harry. “We’ll call you later today.”
Molina left, and I looked to Harry. “Is he running interference, or is he here to help?”
“He gave me a list of troublemakers at Nuevo Pueblo for you to check out. He also offered to act as interpreter. I’m leaning toward saying he’s helpful, but I wouldn’t put my paycheck on it.”
Nuevo Pueblo was the company town Ross Kelly Farms had constructed for its largely immigrant workforce. We rarely made it out there, so I didn’t know it well.
“Give me the names, and I’ll check them out. Do I get a partner on this case?”
“If you need another detective, I’ll fill in,” he said. “We’re short-handed right now.”
And by that he meant we had half the officers we needed to run our department. Though many wealthy people lived in St. Augustine, the majority of our population lived paycheck to paycheck. We did our best with the resources we had. Most days, it was enough.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Unless you need anything, I’ll get to work.”
He walked around the table and slid a piece of paper toward me.
“You’ve got seven suspects so far. Have at it. Good luck.”
I picked up the list and nodded my thanks. Since I didn’t know the victim’s name, and the tornado had destroyed most of our physical evidence, a little good luck would have been nice.
History had taught me not to get my hopes up.