A Southern Promise. Jennifer Lohmann

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СКАЧАТЬ to go out on a limb and say our victim was stabbed to death.”

      Howie ignored his impulse to stop Kia’s jokes. She hadn’t had three years of weekly phone conversations to get to know Mrs. Somerset as anything more than the crazy woman who called the station. Plus, the job was hard on the mind—everyone had coping mechanisms. Wisecracks were Kia’s.

      This room might send them all to the bar for some liquid comfort. Blood was splattered everywhere, at odds with the flowered curtains, yellow walls and sunbeams that made up Mrs. Somerset’s idea of decoration. Though forensics would certainly have their say, anyone with an eye for detail could follow Mrs. Somerset’s attempt to escape through the drips, drops and streaks of red all over the room, ending with the blood-soaked woman on the floor in front of them.

      “Sir,” a pimple-faced rookie said from the doorway, the timbre of his voice a giveaway that he was looking everywhere but at Mrs. Somerset, “you’re needed outside.”

      “Mrs. Carr trying to question our witness?” he asked.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Howie saw the rookie cop rock back and forth, then think better of it and plant his feet on the floor. “No, sir. A woman said she wanted to see her aunt. Henson, uh, Henson thought it would be a good idea to let her wait in the back of a patrol car.” The rookie didn’t say how the niece had been escorted into the back of the car and he didn’t need to. Henson’s many good ideas quickly turned into bad ones upon execution. Handcuffing Mrs. Somerset’s niece and shoving her into the back of a patrol car would be an example, and not an atypical one.

      Howie opened his mouth, but Kia spoke first. “Al’s coordinating. Jack’s already been sent back to headquarters for social-media duty. I’ll wait for forensics. That leaves you on soothing-old-lady duty. Plus, this is your case—you get the first crack at the family.” Her long, bony finger was aimed at him, though the smirk on her lips ruined her don’t-mess-with-me stare.

      Kia turned her back to him and stepped farther into the room, leaving Howie to stare at her back for several seconds before going to speak with Mrs. Somerset’s niece. Informing the woman about her aunt’s death, dealing with her justified anger at how Henson had treated her and providing an open ear and a handkerchief—all those things would build trust between them, which Howie would need in order to learn more about Mrs. Somerset’s life.

      Yet he wanted to stay with Mrs. Somerset. The very thing she had been most paranoid about had happened to her, and Howie thought that the detective directing the investigation of her mortal remains should be the one person on the police force who hadn’t used the word crazy as an insult toward her. Mrs. Somerset had died frightened and alone. The part of Howie that remembered what it was like to care in a deep, painful way about the last few minutes of a victim’s life roared back to life. It wasn’t dead, like he had thought—hoped—it had been. Not dead at all, but dormant, and still useless after all these years.

      Howie stared at Mrs. Somerset’s shredded body for several more infinite seconds before turning back to the front of the house and walking away to do his job.

       CHAPTER TWO

      SITTING IN THE back of a police car, Julianne Dawson wasn’t taking the time to rank all the terrible moments in her life. She didn’t need to. This afternoon was surely near the top. The phone call from her mother telling her that her father had died was in position one, tied with the awful morning she’d come home to find her husband—now ex—having sex on their couch. The sudden dissolution of her marriage probably occupied the number two spot, with “becoming a cliché” solidly ensconced in spot three. A year of therapy hadn’t managed to extinguish that last feeling of failure, even if it had dimmed it to embers.

      Now she wondered who had died. All of the cop cars blocking off Washington could only mean something serious, even though when she’d been ordered to a stop, the local NPR station hadn’t been reporting anything about anything.

      As Julianne sat in the middle of the bench seat in the back of a police car—her shoulders hunched far past the position where her mother would have come up behind her and yanked her back tall and straight—she knew that Aunt Binnie would be looking for the police scanner Julianne had hidden in the attic the last time she’d visited. During that visit, Aunt Binnie had been the epitome of genteel Southern lady until Julianne had mentioned meeting her brother for lunch. The Southern lady had promptly disappeared and an anxious, delusional old woman had burst forth, fear radiating from her eyes.

      Over dinner the next night, Julianne had talked with her mother about finding Aunt Binnie a place in a retirement home, one with progressive facilities for dementia and good mental health care. They’d argued, not about the need for Binnie to have more structured care, but over whether or not to get Binnie out and moved by Thanksgiving. Her brother, Don, had said they should try for earlier.

      Her mother had argued that it would be their Christmas gift to themselves. A similar feeling of anticipated relief had expanded through Julianne’s chest like a blowfish and just as poisonous—though the poison was most dangerous to Binnie. Yet sadness and guilt had made her argue against the idea.

       Not over the holidays, Mom. That’s cruel.

      As if there was ever a good time to manipulate a crazy old woman out of the house that she’d lived in with her husband and into a retirement home. There was death in such places, no matter that they called it a retirement home and not a nursing home. Or, even worse, an old folks’ home.

      Now, with nothing to occupy her mind but her anxiety and the hot summer sun heating up the car, Julianne argued with herself. Not about how she had turned into a limp piece of dough as the cop had directed her to get into the back of the patrol car, which she’d done of her own accord. No, that foolish decision had been made and she was waiting out the consequences. But Aunt Binnie’s future was yet to be decided. And maybe, just maybe, Binnie was holding herself together enough for Julianne to get the retirement home move pushed back to January. Maybe even mid-February.

      Not that it would feel less wrong, but Christmas lights wouldn’t be hanging from the guilt, flashing to the rhythm of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

      Julianne leaned against the cushions of the seat, and then sat forward again when the pressure torqued her shoulders. Police lights flashed all around her and, if she turned her head to the side, she could see a cop with a dog plodding through one of Binnie’s neighbor’s backyards.

      Aunt Binnie must be dying at all this activity. The more the lights flashed and the longer the cops trampled around looking for clues, the more gusto Aunt Binnie would put into rummaging through open closets and strewing the contents of boxes around the guest bedroom, looking for that damned police radio. Her great-aunt’s monsters were ax murderers striking when you least expected it. Men with pistols who robbed convenience stores. Teenagers with automatic weapons who shot their classmates.

      Who was Julianne kidding? Binnie wasn’t going to be handling all this police activity well. Julianne banged on the window with the side of her fist. The back of the cop twitched, but the man didn’t turn around and offer to let her out. She banged harder, trying different patterns, seeing if there was a frequency that would register with the cop’s cold-blooded heart. She needed another chance to explain about mental illness and grief and the crazy old relative that every good Southern family had. Turn on her Southern charm, throw her family name around, anything to get past the line of cops and to Binnie’s side. God, she’d buy the police league youth basketball team new uniforms for a phone and a chance to call Binnie again.

      If that didn’t work, she’d СКАЧАТЬ