Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller) (13 page)

The woman looked at her, squinting. “You deaf?”

Alex had represented enough homeless people to know how unpredictable they could be, whether because of mental illness or substance abuse or both. She didn’t want to antagonize the woman, so she kept her tone even and neutral.

“No.”

“So why you askin’ me was her name Joanie when I just got done sayin’ ‘poor Joanie’?”

“I’m sorry.”

The woman dug into her sweatpants, pulling out a lighter. She put the flame to her cigarette and drew long and deep, hacking and sputtering as she spoke.

“You’re so sorry about everything and none of it’s got anythin’ to do with you.”

Alex nodded. “You’re right. Let’s start over. I’m Alex Stone. Who are you?”

“Gladys Knight. The Pips are around her somewhere.”

“Nice to meet you, Gladys. Tell me about Joanie. What was her last name?” Alex asked, happy to play along.

“How the hell should I know? Last names are the last thing anybody around here cares about.”

“Was Joanie staying in one of the tents that were here the night she was killed?”

The woman’s cigarette had burned down to her fingers. She flicked it onto the ground. “You think I keep track of who comes and goes?”

“I think you haven’t survived this long without paying attention to what’s going on around you.”

The woman squinted at her. “True that, and so’s stayin’ out of what don’t concern me. And that goes double for you and Joanie and that no good, cocksucking, murderin’ Jared whatever the hell his last name is.”

Alex narrowed her eyes, studying the woman, anxious to find out whether her accusation was based on Jared having been arrested or whether she knew something more. She pulled out another twenty-dollar bill.

“Even if it doesn’t concern you, I’d sure like to know why you think my client is a murderer.”

The woman snatched the twenty, wadding it up in the palm of her hand with the first one.

“Wouldn’t you, now?” she said, grinning.

Alex forced a half smile. “Yes, I would.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I told the cops. Go to hell and don’t call me when you get there.”

She turned and disappeared into her tent, zipping the flap closed.

Alex waited a few minutes to see if the woman would return, calling to her but giving up when there was no response, uncertain whether the woman knew anything or had just played her for forty bucks. Rossi’s report made no mention of witnesses who had seen or heard anything, giving credence to the woman’s claim that she had told him nothing. Convinced that she wouldn’t get any further, she walked to the creek to see where Joanie’s body had been found, glad to at least have a first name for the victim, hoping the woman hadn’t scammed her about that as well.

She reached the creek bank, looked down, and nearly fell in when she saw a young girl, no more than ten, with alabaster skin and long, corn-silk hair lying faceup, eyes closed, her head resting in the soft mud, her legs stretched out in the water, her arms spread like wings.

“Oh, my God!” Alex cried, her hand on her chest, terrified she’d found another murder victim.

The girl’s eyes popped open. Seeing Alex staring down at her, she scrambled to her feet and dashed through the water and up the other bank before Alex could say another word. Without uttering a sound or looking back, the girl ran alongside the creek, vanishing into the trees at the south end. All Alex could do was watch her go.

Alex bent over, hands on her knees, and took a series of deep breaths until her heart stopped pounding. Who was the little girl? Was she playing a harmless game or was she reenacting the murder scene, and if she was, how could she have known the details and what could have possessed her to do such a thing? Alex had no answers to any of her questions.

She turned back toward where Jared’s tent had been. The woman had come out of her tent again but went back inside as soon as Alex saw her. Hands on her hips, Alex did a slow turn, taking in the grounds and seeing a sign that had been planted in the ground, christening the area as Liberty Park. Alex thought about that name, imagining what it was like to live and die in this place, and decided that Janis Joplin had been right when she sang
Me and Bobby McGee
. Freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose.

Chapter Twenty-Two

ALEX WOULD HAVE PREFERRED to spend more time at the scene, walking through the crime scene the way Rossi had laid it out, looking for anything that might contradict his report, but the little girl changed all that. She was getting away and the scene wasn’t going anywhere.

Unless the girl was a runaway, she had to live close by. Alex couldn’t see any houses from where she stood, but she knew there weren’t any on Truman Road or Twenty-Third Street. And Alex doubted the child had crossed eight lanes of interstate highway to get to the creek. That meant the child most likely lived to the east, somewhere on the other side of the cliff.

Alex ran for her car, gambling that the child would head for home rather than remain in the woods at the south end of Liberty Park. If she was right, she had a chance of finding the girl before she could hide behind a locked door and parents who would shield her from the lawyer for an accused murderer.

Back in her car, Alex followed the street where she’d parked up a hill and into an unfamiliar neighborhood. The streets were narrow, winding bands of asphalt, crumbling along the edges, bordered by drainage ditches thick with overgrown grass and weeds. She had to be quick without hurrying or risk losing control of her car on the serpentine roads.

Houses and trailers were scattered haphazardly along the streets, some bunched together, others standing alone, many of them so old and run-down that a stiff wind would blow them away. Pit bulls and Dobermans patrolled their turf, snarling and barking when she passed by. Signs saying
Keep Out
and
Beware of Dog
were plentiful enough to convince any door-to-door salesman—or lawyer—to try her luck elsewhere.

No one was working in their yard or sitting at a window or on their front porch. No children were playing on swing sets or in the street. There was no one at all, which wasn’t unusual on a weekday afternoon, when adults were likely at work and children in school, but there was something about the neighborhood that felt alone or abandoned. Maybe it was the dilapidated, neglected conditions, or maybe it was something missing in the lives of the people who lived there. Whatever the cause, it gave her a prickly uneasiness, making her anxious to find the little girl, talk to her, and get out of there.

Several times she thought she caught a glimpse of the girl darting among the trees, her long blond hair matted against her neck. But when she slowed for a closer look, no one was there, making Alex wonder if what she’d seen was just the sun reflecting off the leaves rustling in the breeze, the elusive images tantalizing enough for her to keep searching.

She wound her way through the neighborhood again and again before catching a woman parking a white Chevy Impala in a driveway she’d passed twice before. The car was missing its hubcaps and a rear brake light. A sheet of plastic was duct-taped over the missing passenger window on the driver’s side, and the left quarter panel was rusted out above the wheel well. The driveway belonged to a saltbox house with a roof that sagged in the middle and siding that was peeling in places and fading in others. A storage shed sat at the back of the driveway, its door padlocked with a heavy chain.

Alex stopped in front of the house, rolling her window down and calling to the woman when she got out of her car.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

The woman had copper-red hair courtesy of a bad dye job and enough makeup for a drag queen, her glittering green eye shadow visible at a distance. She wore jeans that were too tight for the heft she carried and an even tighter shirt stretched over mountainous breasts subdivided by the strap of the purse slung between them.

“Yeah,” the woman said.

Alex got out of her car and crossed the yard to the driveway, glad that there was no dog in sight.

“I’m looking for a little girl, probably about ten. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt and has long blond hair.”

The woman blinked, glancing over her shoulder at the thicket of trees behind her. It was enough to make Alex think the woman not only knew the child but was also looking for her.

“She your kid?” the woman asked, the corners of her mouth twitching.

“No.”

“Relative of yours?”

“No.”

“You even know her name?”

“I don’t,” Alex said, not liking the way the conversation was going.

“What makes you think she lives around here?”

“I saw her playing in that creek that runs through the area . . . I don’t know what to call it . . . There’s a sign that says Liberty Park.”

The woman cocked her head at Alex, one eyebrow raised. “Uh-huh. What do you want with her?”

Alex smiled, trying to keep their conversation casual and friendly, knowing the more questions she was asked, the fewer answers she would get to her own questions.

“I just want to talk to her.”

“About what?”

“The other day, a woman’s body was found in the creek right where she was playing, and I thought maybe,” Alex said, holding up her palm, “and I know it’s probably a long shot—but maybe if that’s someplace she liked to play, if she was down there a lot, she might have seen somebody or something that would help me find out what happened.”

The woman squinted at her. “You a cop?”

Alex took a breath, shaking her head, knowing that this was the moment when things could go south. Most people didn’t like getting involved in anything outside their own lives, especially cops, courts, and crimes. It was a toss-up between whom they disliked more—the police who might one day arrest them or the lawyers who they suspected would get the guilty off on a technicality unless they happened to be the one who was guilty.

“No, I’m a lawyer and I’m representing a man whose been charged with murdering that woman.”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, tightening her jaw. “Well, I don’t know nothing about no little girl or dead woman.”

Alex studied her for a moment, the woman returning the stare. Alex broke eye contact first, digging her wallet out of her jeans and removing a business card.

“If you happen to hear anything or run across that little girl, I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call,” she said, handing the card to the woman. “My client’s life could depend on it.”

The woman reluctantly took the card without looking at it, her downturned mouth sour proof that she was unmoved by Alex’s appeal.

“Sure,” the woman said.

Alex drove away, watching the woman in her rearview mirror, the woman crumpling her business card and dropping it on the ground. Just as Alex rounded a curve, she saw the little girl dash out from behind the storage shed, running to the woman’s side, ducking behind the woman and out of Alex’s sight.

She stopped in the middle of the street, debating whether to turn around. The woman was probably the child’s mother and had done what any mother would have done when a stranger tried to draw her daughter into a murder investigation. Confronting her now would only make the woman more protective, but Alex had to take that chance, because the longer she waited to talk to the girl, the more likely the mother was to make sure the girl told her nothing.

Alex spun the wheel and drove back to the house, slamming her hand on the steering wheel when she saw the empty driveway. The woman, the girl, and the Impala were gone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

HANK ROSSI SLOWED HIS CAR as he approached the scene of Robin Norris’s fatal accident on Northwest Barry Road, pulling off onto the westbound shoulder and parking behind Charlie Wheeler’s car. Getting out, he surveyed the scene.

It was a rural area, with only a few homes in the vicinity, none of them close to the accident scene or one another. Barry Road ran generally east and west, though from where he stood, it curved to the south before straightening back to the west. The ground dropped off from his side of the road at a severe angle, sloping down to a grove of trees, one of which was scarred from the impact of Robin’s car. Wheeler was standing in front of the tree, running his hand across the damaged trunk.

“Careful you don’t get a splinter, Mayor,” Rossi said.

Wheeler hobbled up the slope, slowed by his bad leg, rubbing his thigh when he reached the road. “About time you got here.”

Rossi pointed to the tree. “Is that the smoking gun that’s going to make our case?”

“More like the last dot in a long string of dots that we’re going to connect.”

Rossi rubbed the back of his neck, craning his head to loosen his muscles. “Okay. So where’s dot number one?”

“Follow me. Not much traffic for a Friday afternoon, but pay attention anyway. I don’t want to spend my weekend filling out reports explaining how you got run over.” They waited for a break in traffic before walking to the painted yellow line dividing the two lanes. “You see that curved tire mark that starts in the westbound lane in the middle of the curve?”

“Yeah.”

Wheeler turned toward the south edge of the road. “That tire mark goes all the way across the eastbound lane to the point at which the victim’s car left the road.”

“That’s a big skid mark. What’s it mean other than she was going too fast?”

“I’ll get to her speed in a minute. And don’t call it a skid mark. It’s either a yaw mark or a spin mark. A yaw mark is caused when a driver makes an abrupt steering maneuver to avoid an object in the roadway or to stay on the road when entering a curve too fast. But a spin mark is caused when one vehicle impacts another.”

“So how do you know whether it was a yaw mark or a spin mark?”

“The easiest way to tell is if there’s also a dark scuff mark at the point of impact.”

Rossi studied the westbound lane. “I don’t see anything like that.”

“Me either.”

“So we’re missing a dot. What does that leave us with besides her speed? How fast was she going, anyway?”