Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Two

Then, across the water, so close you could almost skip a rock there, downtown rose to meet the sky. The Dominion Power building, the Federal Reserve, the big hotels, the bank towers, and MeadWestvaco turned the opposite shore into solid cityscape and, at twilight, a twinkling light show.

It was something to see any time but now. Now the drizzle shrouded the city in gray, and the detail had to leave the path and beat its way through the woods and underbrush to do a thorough job. In another park, about three miles down on the other side of the river, tiny beaten trails led through the tangle of reeds to clearings where the homeless sat on plastic crates, smoked dope, and even built campfires, and you would never find them unless you looked. A strangled girl's body—someone John's girlfriend Lizzie knew—had been dumped there last year, and no one had found her for three weeks.

And it was John's job to look. He could hardly wait to climb around the old VEPCO plant at the south end of the island. As if anyone who knew anything would really still be here.

Wishing he had a backpack full of mosquito repellent, John left the path and trudged into the woods.

                                                                                               ***

After a humid and fruitless search, John whipped through the warrant he'd need for Pride's home phone records. He could skip that step for his cell phone—it was a department-issued phone.

He hurried back from the magistrate, eager to get started. As he cracked the squad room door open, he heard, "I can't believe he crawled that far." Detective Trish Newsome, the other woman in homicide, had tears in her voice. John heard her blowing her nose. "A collapsed lung, and bleeding out at the same time? Oh, my God."

"Well, he was in good shape," Detective Solly James, another old-timer, said. A long pause, then he added, "Sarge wasn't any fat doughnut-eater." Solly was nearing sixty and retiring in two months. The same could not be said for him. "This shooter was someone he knew. One round through the arm and into the chest. Looks like he was anticipating a bullet-proof vest."

"Well, he's not military, and he's probably not law enforcement," Mike Little said, having fought in the Persian Gulf himself. "If he were, he'd have taken a cold-bore shot. At eye-level—snaps the cervical spine." He had his two fingers up in front of his eyes, demonstrating, as John pushed the door open and walked in.

Savonn and Mike were typing reports, chairs half-turned toward each other as if they were jabbering away at the same time. Trish Newsome and Solly huddled up with them, cardboard boxes on their laps.

Trish sat, staring into space, then she blinked and reached into her box. "Wait a minute, who'd Arlene give the book?"

Solly peered into his box and pawed through it. "No appointment book in here. I'm doing the checkbook and the mail. Who wants the email contacts?"

"I can do that," said John.

Everyone but Savonn turned and peered over at John, presenting a solid wall of shoulders. Savonn kept his attention on Trish.

"Arlene left his appointment book in the office. We've got that with the past and present cases." Finally he turned to John with a sad half-smile. "Yo, Lazy Boy. You get anything?"

The nickname smarted. It wasn't John's fault that he'd cleared two more murders than Savonn so far this year, off slam-dunk easy cases. It was luck of the draw. "Several hundred mosquito bites, that's about it. But you guys must've got something."

Mike swung around in the big orthopedic back chair he'd purchased and hauled up to the squad room himself. "Yeah, the blood coagulated on the rock, and the shooter left us a message."