Blood On The Bridge Page 14

  The police finding Buck was all he cared about right now. Lee was still in danger if Buck was out there. He had no idea what Buck was capable of. Could he get him in the hospital? No, no. That was crazy. How would he get past the two guards? Lee would be okay. He would pull through this. He told himself to stop worrying and tried to enjoy the free cable. Nascar was starting to grow on him.

  Whatever drip they had him hooked up to was working wonders. When Conn woke him up, a smile on her face, his head didn’t even hurt anymore. How long have I been out? he wondered. He tried to focus on the clock, but the green numbers were all out of whack, actually looking more like squiggly neon marker lines a child would draw on a sheet of paper. He closed one eye and tried to concentrate. No luck.

  “You feeling any better?” Conn asked him.

  Before all the bad memories flooded his mind, he was almost happy to see her.

  “I’m fine,” he said and looked at the ceiling, not because he didn’t want to look Conn in the eyes but because parts of her face were doing a weird topsy-turvy maneuver.

  “I’ve got good news,” Conn said.

  Lee waited for more, noticing the ceiling was exceptionally clean. How do they keep it so clean? he wondered.

  “We found Buck.”

  Excited, Lee tried to sit up, a bit too fast. A sharp pain in his temple sent him flying back onto the bed. Conn squeezed his hand, but he ripped it away.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Where is he now?”

  “The morgue. He’s dead.”

  That surprised him. Relief spread through his entire body. If Buck was dead, then everything would be okay. The guy must have put up a fight if he was dead, Lee thought.

  “How’d it happen?” Lee asked.

  “It was a suicide. We found him at the speedway.”

  Lee’s relief was short-lived. Buck wouldn’t do that. Someone killed him. Lee hadn’t thought about there being another person involved with Jennifer’s murder.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” said Lee.

  “You’ve only known him for a few months,” Conn protested. “You can’t be sure he didn’t.”

  “Someone like that doesn’t commit suicide. There’s someone else involved in all of this.”

  It was as if Lee was listening to himself speak. Someone else? Someone else out to get him.

  “They’ll come looking for me. Whoever killed Buck is tying up loose ends.” Lee wondered how cops could be so stupid.

  Conn walked to the corner of the room and put a hand on the wall. Lee could tell she was grappling with the same conclusion, but for some reason she was fighting it. She crossed the length of the room in four quick strides and shut the door.

  “There’s nowhere else to go with Jennifer’s case,” Conn finally said and walked back to Lee’s bedside. “You heard them both say they killed her. They’re both dead. Forensics didn’t notice any foul play at Buck’s crime scene, and everything checked out at Danny’s.”

  “Think about it. You’re a detective. Just think about it. Of course there’s someone else involved. And that means someone else is going to come after me sooner or later.”

  She shook her head. “Just stick to your story and you’ll get out of this spotless.”

  “Thank god it’s all working out in my favor,” he said sarcastically.

  Conn picked up on what he was getting at.

  “I couldn’t tell Agent Sanchez I was with you the night she was murdered.”

  “So you’d just let me go to jail if it went south?”

  “My son is my main priority. You knew what this was when we started. I told you it would never be more. I could lose my job if anyone found out what we were doing.”

  Lee was past the point of caring about what she thought about him, so he let her have it.

  “You’re right. I knew exactly what this was. And I knew exactly who you were. If this goes any worse for me, I’ll tell them you were with me. I’m not risking jail so you can live a happily-ever-after with your son.”

  “I’ll deny it.”

  Lee laughed for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. It was a fake laugh, but still.

  “That’s fine. Think about what I do for a living. You don’t think I have safeguards in place? A few surveillance cameras set up at my place? Let’s assume I do. Going into tonight, the most logical thing for me to do would have been to give someone I trust a copy of what was on those tapes in case the police tried to turn on me.”

  He was bluffing of course. Jarvis was holding onto a copy of what Danny had said about the soldier. Lee had had no idea Conn would turn on him, or he might have left footage of her entering his apartment with Jarvis too. Either way, he made his threat. He watched worry and hate broil in her eyes.

  Before she could respond, one of the MPs was heard telling people to back up. Conn lifted one of the blinds to see what was going on and caught a camera flash right in the eyes.

  “What’s going on out there?” Lee asked.

  “Reporters,” she said, then spun on Lee. “You’ll get out of this as long as you stick to what you told me and Sanchez about what you heard. You better hope to god that whatever you have on camera never sees the light of day. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am just to have it all ruined by some drug dealer who can’t get his life together.”

  And then she was gone.

  The amount of hate and then regret he was filled with in that moment transcended anything he had ever felt before. Having one feeling for someone one second and then a completely different feeling the next second wasn’t something Lee was used to.

  All he wanted was a small apology from Conn and maybe some reassuring words like “I’ll stick by you no matter what, baby.” Wishful thinking on his end. The complete opposite had happened. She would rather watch him rot in jail then help him out. And now he had to worry about the possibility of someone else being out there, waiting for a chance to take him out. But he had done his part—even if he had been forced into it—and told the police what he knew about the girl on the bridge.

  Recognizing the lack of control he had in his current state of affairs, Lee let the drugs take over and slid back into dreamland.

  Chapter 30

  When Riley got home, she curled up on her couch with a blanket and Andrew’s file. A cold front had moved in and made a good case for bundling up. All she wanted was sleep. No time for that, she thought. Andrew’s in-processing paperwork confirmed most of the information she had on him so far. He was a truck driver and had joined the Army in Dallas, Texas, at the age of nineteen. After finishing his four-year contract, he reenlisted for another four years while overseas in Baghdad.

  He had Fort Campbell guaranteed as his duty station for another four years in his reenlistment contract. Riley tried hard to imagine the appeal of staying at Fort Campbell. Jennifer Carlson was the only reason she could think of.

  The next document in his folder had his training records listed. He passed Air Assault School, but failed the Pathfinder course the one time he tried it. Andrew and Jennifer’s enlistments continued to parallel each other. That bothered Riley.

  Her cell phone chimed. She picked it up off her coffee table. A new text message from Thomas was displayed on the bright smart phone screen. “What time should I pick you up, pretty lady?” She had forgotten about dinner, but she would have to eat at some point that night, so she texted him back, telling him to be at her place by eight.

  Andrew’s emergency contact sheet had two numbers. One for a Russell Brown and another for a Charlene Brown. They were both listed as his parents. Riley decided she would call the mother. For whatever reason, mothers enjoyed speaking about their children more than fathers did.

  Riley took into consideration that the call would seem odd, a soldier calling out of the blue, asking questions about a dead soldier, a dead son as far as the mother was concerned. Reminding someone of a lost loved one was not something Riley wanted to do, but her
need to figure out what had happened to Jennifer, and now Andrew, pushed her on.

  The line rang a few times, and Riley thought she would have to give the father a call. A woman answered with a low, flat voice just before Riley was about to hang up.

  “Hello,” Charlene said.

  “Hi. I was hoping to speak with Charlene Brown,” Riley said.

  “That’s me. Who is this?”

  “Sergeant Riley. I’m a soldier stationed at Fort Campbell.”

  The other end of the phone remained quiet.

  Riley went on, “I need to ask you some questions about Andrew.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  Charlene’s voice quavered. There was no reason to beat around the bush, so Riley cut to the chase.

  “I don’t think his death was an accident.”

  “Have you been talking to Jennifer?” Charlene asked in a hysterical tone. “It was hard enough losing a son without having to listen to her go on about how he didn’t die in an accident.”

  So she knew Jennifer. But she didn’t know she was dead.

  “I’ve never spoken to Jennifer and I never will. She was found murdered a few days ago.”

  Quiet again.

  “What do you want to know?” the woman finally asked.

  “How did Andrew and Jennifer know each other?”

  “They were engaged. He met her while he was on R&R from his second deployment to Iraq. I thought she was after his money, but then they visited us down in Dallas on one of his four-day weekends when he was back from the deployment for good, and I could tell she loved him.”

  “When was the last time you saw Jennifer?”

  “At Andrew’s funeral. That’s when she told me about her theory that Andrew was killed.”

  “Could you tell me what her theory was?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Charlene said. “It was an awful day and then she started crying and telling me something about how he was murdered because of stolen guns or bullets or something, I think. I slapped her before she finished telling me and then I walked out of the room. I haven’t seen her since.”

  Stolen guns and ammunition. Now Riley was getting somewhere.

  “Did you know she joined the Army?” Riley asked.

  “No,” Charlene said. “Why would she do that?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  Riley let the quiet linger. Silence brought confessions.

  “She was broken after he died,” said Charlene. “She was already pretty alone in the world before she met Andrew. Her parents passed away in a car wreck a few years before she met my son.”

  Riley could hear Charlene trying to cover her crying.

  “Do you really think he was murdered?” Charlene asked.

  “All I know is that Jennifer was,” said Riley. “Do you have anything of his from when he was stationed at Fort Campbell? Like photos, maybe letters between him and Jennifer?”

  “Just a few letters Jennifer wrote him while he was deployed.”

  “What about the letters he wrote her?”

  “She probably kept them. I don’t know where they would be, though.”

  Charlene was reluctant to email Riley copies of Jennifer’s letters to Andrew. But in the end, Riley was able to convince her that it would help her determine whether or not there was any foul play in Andrew’s death. Hope was a mother’s best friend.

  What was odd about Andrew’s training accident was the fact that standard protocol had been broken leading up to the rollover that caused his death. He didn’t have anyone in the truck with him. One of the first things you learn in the Army is that you will always have a battle buddy with you, someone to watch your back and vice versa. But he did not. And whoever Thomas had talked to at Andrew Brown’s old unit told him there weren’t any training exercises going on that day that anyone knew about. A cover-up sounded more plausible with every new bit of information Riley came across.

  By the time Riley received the letters in an email from Charlene, her stomach was rumbling. All she’d had that day was breakfast with Tim, and all she had in her fridge was some old takeout from the awful Italian restaurant down the street from her apartment. She decided to take a ride down to a sandwich shop she’d heard about that served the best grilled cheese in the city, admittedly baffled by the idea there was a list of best grilled cheese sandwiches floating around Clarksville. She slid her laptop into her shoulder bag, hurried out of the apartment, and locked the front door.

  Riley liked parking her car at the curb by her apartment. She could keep an eye on it from one of her living room windows. So when she strolled up to it and saw the state it was in, she couldn’t believe she had missed it. Every single tire on her vehicle had been slashed.

  Riley pulled out her phone and called the Clarksville PD.

  “Clarksville Police Department,” a woman said in a deep voice.

  “Hi. I just walked out to my car and saw that someone vandalized it,” Riley said.

  “Would you like an officer to come out to your residence and take a statement?” the woman asked.

  The question caught Riley’s tongue for a moment.

  “Isn’t that what normally happens?”

  “I can have an officer take your statement over the phone as well. It’s your choice,” said the woman.

  Riley doubted anything would come of the statement, but she knew her car insurance company would ask if the damage was reported to the police.

  “In person please,” Riley said.

  Riley waited for the better part of an hour before a cop showed up. After giving the clearly agitated officer her statement, she called a tire shop and had them pick up her car. Then she called her insurance company and put in a claim.

  The last call she made was to Thomas.

  “Sure,” was all he said when Riley asked him out to lunch.

  Thomas picked out a burger spot that looked more like a toolshed in the middle of a strip mall parking lot. He put their order in with the older woman manning the register then sat down across from Riley at a picnic table.

  “So you wanna talk about it?” Thomas asked.

  Riley raised an eyebrow and tried to follow what he was talking about.

  “The car . . . ,” he said.

  “Probably just some shitty kids in the neighborhood,” Riley said and took a swig from her bottle of water.

  “Kids didn’t do that,” he said. “Does this have anything to do with that dead soldier? Jennifer?”

  Riley was caught off guard. “Why would you say that?”

  “You were mentioning her name in your sleep last night,” he said and took a swig of his soda, a mischievous smile plastered on his face. “And I kind of put two and two together. Most of the people around base have heard about her. And you’ve had me snooping around like some spy asking questions about this soldier Andrew Brown. They must be connected somehow.”

  Not a huge leap. But Thomas was lying. Riley could feel it, but not as strongly as she usually did. If she had mentioned the name Jennifer to anyone on base, they would initially think of the murdered soldier Jennifer Carlson who had been named in the local paper. But for Thomas to connect Jennifer Carlson to the snooping she had him doing . . . No, he couldn’t. It was outside the realm of his intellect. Was Thomas spying on her? Was he the one who had left the note on her car? Slashed her tires? He did show up pretty fast after she called him about lunch. He always seemed to be free when she needed him. Not normal for an active-duty enlisted soldier. Maybe she was imagining things. She chalked her paranoia up to a lack of sleep and the pills she was on. Thomas had just made a lucky guess.

  “Yeah, it is,” said Riley. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to her.”

  “She was killed.” He laughed, like she hadn’t read the papers.

  “Of course she was. But why?”

  Thomas shrugged.

  “I found out some interesting things the past couple days. The most important is that An
drew and Jennifer were engaged.”

  “What?” Thomas asked. “How do you know that?”

  “I talked to Andrew Brown’s mother. And Jennifer told her she didn’t think he died in a training accident either,” Riley said, dangling the bait.

  “What then?” asked Thomas, leaning forward.

  “Jennifer claimed it was a cover-up.”

  “Come on,” Thomas said, shaking his head in disbelief. “A cover-up? Really? You’re watching too many of those crime shows. Shit like that doesn’t happen in the military. Too many people would have to be involved.”

  “I’m serious. It has to do with stolen guns or ammunition or something. This is real, Thomas.”

  “Okay, say I buy into the cover-up angle. ‘Guns and shit’ is kind of broad. What else do you have?”

  “That’s really it so far,” she said and then remembered the letters. “And these letters Andrew’s mom sent me, but I haven’t gone through them yet.”

  Riley grabbed her laptop from his car and pulled it out at the picnic table. She opened the PDFs of the eight letters Charlene had emailed her. Charlene even went so far as to put a date with each letter. Thomas read through them with her.

  “These are just the thoughts of a lonely woman whose boyfriend is thousands of miles away from home,” he said.

  Thomas was right. Riley gazed up at the cloudless blue sky and let the sun soak in. The letters didn’t provide Riley with anything she could use. But she was finally beginning to see how all the dots connected. A soldier killed for not cooperating in a weapons heist. A woman so hell-bent on revenge that she would risk her life to find the person responsible for her lover’s death.

  If her theory was correct, a cover-up had been going on for the better part of two years. And she knew exactly where to look to confirm her suspicions. The cashier called their number, and Thomas got up to grab the burgers.

  “Get those to go,” Riley said and walked back to Thomas’s car before he could reply.

  Chapter 31