Chapter Four
Lily slapped her hand down hard on the alarm clock by her bed to silence the annoying beeping. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour, but she was scheduled to open the diner today. Stupid of her to have stayed out so late on patrol and her body was screaming in protest as she sat up. Lily groaned and slammed her eyes closed in disbelief. Not because she wanted to go back to sleep – she did, but her agitation was for another reason entirely. Mud was smeared all over the quilt she was laying on top of and she was fully dressed, even wearing her hiking boots when she knew full well that after patrolling in fur she had showered off the mud, donned a nightshirt, and had tucked her exhausted body under the covers.
“Not again.”
Standing up, Lily looked around the small cabin for clues. The curtains on the windows were drawn, the door was locked, yet clumps of mud left a tell-tale trail from the door to her bed. Her nightshirt was there on the floor at the foot of her bed, a prominent muddy footprint where she had obviously stepped on the thing before falling onto the mattress. Turning her attention back to her person, Lily grimaced. Her hands were grubby with dirt, black crescents under each of her nails, around the cuticles, and caked into the lines of her knuckles. Had she been digging for buried treasure? The black leggings she didn’t remember donning were crusted with dried mud on both knees, and the black hooded sweatshirt was spattered up the front. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d gone outside, but she couldn’t help but wonder just how far she had wandered.
She had been a sleepwalker as a child. Her parents had often been called by the neighbors to let them know that she had come visiting. According to her folks, she would walk right into houses and make herself at home, sit on the couch, watch television, and Lily never remembered a thing about her little trips the next day.
The episodes had stopped once her parents had moved Daisy and Lily into the same bedroom since Lily had always seemed to end up there anyway. Lily had assumed she had outgrown the habit, but now that Daisy was no longer living with her, and she was alone again for the first time since childhood, the odd behavior had returned. It wasn’t every night, luckily, but this was the third time in a year that she knew of, that she had apparently dressed herself, left the cabin, and gone walk-about. It was disconcerting, knowing that your body had gone somewhere, possibly done things, yet your mind having no memory of the event.
Out of habit, Lily avoided her reflection in the mirror as she entered the bathroom, wrenched open the medicine cabinet and snatched up the bottle of ibuprofen to combat the tension headache that was just starting to dig its claws into her skull. She needed to shower, get dressed and head into work. She didn’t have time to solve the mystery of where she had gone last night by tracking footprints. And judging by the rhythmic patter of rain on the roof that she hadn’t noticed during her preoccupation, she wouldn’t have had much luck anyway.
Lily groaned again and covered her face with her hands as a ghastly thought trickled into her mind. Please don’t let her have wandered over to that bear’s cabin… please. How humiliating would that have been? What would he think of her, just showing up, possibly even just walking in and making herself at home? Talk about embarrassing. Just the thought had her entire face hot with humiliation, and the tips of her ears scalding.
Gritting her teeth, which only made the pounding in her head worse, Lily forced herself to focus. She made quick work of her shower, dressed, pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and then grabbed a cereal bar and her umbrella before heading out the door.
She had set a ground eating pace as she made the trek to her car, but her feet seemed to have a mind of their own since they slowed as soon as she came upon the only other cabin in the area. The new lumber stood out even in the dim gray light of just before sunrise, and her eyes frantically searched the churned and muddy earth around the cabin looking for familiar footprints. It was no use, if she had been here, the rain had done its work in concealing the evidence. She would simply have to wait until that bear came in for his morning coffee and breakfast of blueberry waffles. She could just imagine the scene: he’d pin her with those dark eyes of his, maybe a smug grin proclaiming he knew a secret…
Snarling at the thought, Lily got her feet moving back in the right direction. She’d deal with that bear if she had to, put him in his place, and tell him where he could stick it if the need arose. Until then, she needed to get her ass to work.
Detective Janet Sanford pulled her unmarked cruiser up to the apartment complex and groaned. The sun was barely up yet it looked like every tenant was awake and pulling a rubberneck as they crowded around the open door of one particular apartment. And just about every one of them had a phone in hand ready to post the details to every social media account known to man. Perfect, she thought with a twist of her lips.
For some things, social media was an excellent tool, missing persons for example, or robberies where security cameras may have only gotten grainy footage or partial visuals… But there were other times, other cases, where social media posts only forewarned, and therefore forearmed, the criminals. At this point, Janet had no idea which category this particular crime would fall into, but she’d rather err on the side of caution and keep exposure to a minimum.
Grabbing up her to-go cup of coffee, Janet prepared herself to push through the onlookers to see what was waiting for her on the other side of that door. Her gut told her it wouldn’t be pretty. Homicide never was. After twenty years on the force, one might think that she’d be used to this – able to click off her emotions and just do the job – and perhaps, outwardly she did a good job of pretending, but every single crime scene was a shock to her system. And every case still made her feel like a rookie battling doubt.
Ignoring the barrage of questions from the peanut gallery, Janet shouldered her way inside the tiny, rat-trap apartment, and took in the buzz of activity as the crime scene was photographed. “What have we got?” She asked, approaching her partner, Detective Rick Gimbal. Janet always thought that Rick would have fit in nicely as a cop back in the early seventies with his mustache that was thicker than the hair on top of his head, the beer gut that hung over his belt, and his offhand racism and misogyny that was a page straight out of the good ole boys’ book. With her being a woman, and African American to boot, to say they’d had a rocky start was an understatement. She had attempted to play nice at first, wanting to fit in, and not cause a fuss, she used her words to express her displeasure, liberally sprinkled with please and thank you… He’d actually thought she was joking and had laughed off her comments. Turns out that withgood ole boyslike Rick, you needed to be a bit blunter. So she had pulled him aside one day and told him pointblank that she didn’t like his attitude, didn’t find him funny, and if he didn't cut the shit and get his act together, she was going to use him for target practice. They got along famously after that. Hell, he may even be a better person now because of her sensitivity training with a sledgehammer approach.
Rick scratched his balding head before returning his hand to his hip. “Victim is Stanley Duncan, twenty-nine, lived alone. Divorced – ex-wife has an active restraining order against him – so there’s that, in addition to a whole slew of priors: DUI, petty theft, assault, and assorted noise related complaints... Real standup guy.” Rick sneered shooting her a speaking glance before he continued. “Probable cause of death is blunt force trauma to the head, possibly drug related, since by the look of this place the guy was dealing heroin.” With a jerk of his head, Rick indicated the small table littered with drug paraphernalia: scales, baggies, and what looked like roughly a half a kilo of product. “No forced entry, so whoever it was that beat him to death was probably expected or someone he knew.”
“Who found the body?”
“One of his co-workers.” Rick grimaced and flipped through the little notebook he always kept in his pocket. “Reggie Parker. Worked with the victim at the local quarry and had been giving him a ride in to work since Mr. Duncan lost his license for multiple DUI. When Stanley didn’t come out, his ride thought he had overslept and pounded on the door to wake him. When he didn’t get a response, he tried the door and found it unlocked and the body on the floor.”
Janet nodded, making a mental note to have a conversation with Mr. Parker. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her partner, she absolutely did, but she liked to hear and see a witness first hand, watch their eyes, their pulse, and respiration… get a feel for whether or not they were holding back or outright lying. “Any witnesses?”
Rick snorted. “A whole slew of them outside ready to offer their two cents on our vic’s character, but I haven’t gotten a chance to interview anyone yet.”
With another nod, Janet finally turned her eyes to the body on the floor and took in the details. White male, dark hair now matted with blood, his head oddly shaped and caved in on one side. Multiple bruises and lacerations on his face and what could be seen of his upper body through the once white muscle shirt the vic had been wearing. Tattoos on the side of his neck screamed possible gang affiliation, additional ink down both arms, as well as on the tops of his hands and fingers which looked broken. Probably defensive wounds when he had tried to cover his head to ward off the blows.
A chain went from the front of the vic’s blood stained jeans and around his hip. “Wallet missing?” Janet asked, her eyes moving from the body back to the table with the drugs. “Possible robbery?”
Rick shook his head. “Nope. Wallet is still in his pocket and nothing appears to be missing including a full cash box on the table.”
Janet spotted the aforementioned box sitting by the scales and slid her eyes over the rest of the apartment, taking in the spider webbed screen of a flat screen television, blood spatter on the age-yellowed walls, the rust colored drips on the threadbare carpet, and the two, no, three bloody teeth… “Baseball bat?”
Rick grimaced and nodded. “That’s my guess too.”
Janet sighed and nodded toward the team gathering evidence. “Let’s let them finish bagging and tagging while we go talk to the neighbors.”
With a grunt, Rick pulled his little notebook back out and fell into step beside her.
