Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Eleven

John held up one round—a lead semi-wadcutter on a silver case. The head stamp was Winchester Western, but this round had to be a misfire. The primer had been clearly and deeply struck by the firing pin. When did Greenhouse actually fire?

He held the round between his thumb and forefinger and shook it next to his ear. The powder rustled around inside like pepper in a shaker. Just as he thought the bullet could be a light target reload, he felt the projectile shift in the casing. Startled—reloaders always resize and crimp their reloads—he twisted the projectile like a bottle cap. It moved, but he couldn't get it to come out.

He clamped his teeth on the lead bullet, and with a twist the bullet popped free of the casing. A sweet taste exploded across his tongue.

He poured out the powder. White granules sprinkled across his desk. John glanced at the head stamp again and jotted the number down on a sticky note. He slipped it into his notebook.

The remaining five bullets all had the same head stamp and dented primers. He decided to leave the rest of the "taste testing" to a lab tech.

                                                                                               ***

Donna Greenhouse answered her door in a flowing orange tent that did a lot for her auburn hair and her blue eyes. Her extra sixty pounds looked less obvious in it, but nothing could ever completely hide that much weight. John prepared to pull out his badge, but she stopped him in a whisper.

"Detective Robin! I remember you. Come on in. Dad's asleep."

The glow of daylight from the floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding door looked as blue today as it had the first time he was here. Like a strange alien light at the end of a dark tunnel. At least, that was what the place felt like.

"I was having some coffee out on the balcony. Want some?"

"Sure, that'd be fine. I have to talk to you and your father, but we don't have to wake him up immediately."

Donna opened the sliding door and they stepped out into blinding sun; the traffic at Fourteenth and Dock sounded as if it were right on the balcony with them. Eighty-three degrees was hot for early April, but a cool breeze off the James made it possible to stay in his jacket. A little coffee pot stood on a wrought iron table on the balcony, with a blue flowered mug, a pint carton of cream, a glass container filled with packets of artificial sweetener, and a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal. Two slices of dewy cantaloupe sat on a little glass plate, garnished with several strawberries and a handful of fat blueberries.

Donna hastened back inside and returned with a glass of ice water and a white mug for John. He sat, poured himself coffee, and took a sip. Sumatra. It tasted like Lamplighter's. John practically lived at that specialty coffee shop.

"So, are you okay up here?" he asked. "I'd be worried, with my father threatening to kill me. We're not going to have to make another emergency trip up here, are we?"

She sat and picked up her oatmeal spoon. "I don't think so. He's kind of mellowed out since his trip to the hospital." She shrugged one shoulder. "That's what he wants me to think, anyway. BP's can do that, you know. Act perfectly normal while inside they're having a complete meltdown. Then, the next thing you know, bloo-ey!" She shook her head and sat back and chewed her oatmeal, her gaze cutting across the railroad tracks to the river.

John quirked his eyebrows and said, "Bipolar disorder?"

She leaned forward, her shoulders curving toward him as if to conceal a secret from the breeze. "Borderline personality disorder. Finally, a diagnosis! I always knew something was really wrong. Okay, maybe not when I was really little, but from the time I was eight or nine, I knew."