I would remember this moment for the rest of my life. It could have been her eyes that told the story. Only, I had seen this all before. I could see every secret that she held; all her dreams, all her ambitions, laid out in front of me. Yet, as I stared into her once vivid, dark, green eyes, they were now cold and dead. All the life had been drained out of them. She didn't even look like a person to me anymore. I felt nothing.
"You shouldn't be here," Parker said, pulling me back.
"I want to be here." I said, shaking him off.
"You shouldn't be here!" Parker shouted again, grabbing me by the shoulder.
I brushed him off again.
"Come on, man," Parker said grabbing my shoulder more forcefully and turning me.
I turned and pushed him, hard.
"I want to be here!" I yelled.
The crowd that had gathered was now looking at me and I felt like I was the one on display. Lloyd came over to where we were standing.
"Parker," he began. "Get him out of here."
Parker bear hugged me and pulled me away from the scene as I tried to kick him off.
"Let me go!" I yelled.
"You don't need to see this!" he yelled back.
Photo flashes snapped and sirens wailed in the background but seemed to fade.
The smell from the landfill didn't even seem to faze me. My gaze remained fixed on the scene, but something still wasn't right. Everything seemed like it was in slow motion.
There on the ground, laid Amber Faraway, a Queen of Hearts playing card resting on her body.
♣ ♣ ♣
Parker had put me in the car and put a shock blanket around me until the crime scene unit was done with their sweep and the scene was cleared up. I watched them bag up Amber's lifeless body and carry it away from the scene. It was only the day before that she had left me.
When we got back to the station it was later in the day. Parker didn't say a word to me since he had put me in the back of the car. We sat silently at our desks before he finally stood up and walked to the locker room.
I heard him yelling into the air and the sound of punches against the lockers. I calmly sat there and filed paperwork. A few more hours went by and it was night. Everyone had returned from the station including Finley who had arrived to give the forensic report.
"The victim is Amber Faraway, fourth digit of the right hand has been amputated, postmortem, no sign of it at the scene." he sighed and looked up at me. Then he tried to get through the rest as quickly as possible without taking a breath. "Tox screen was negative. There are signs that she was recently sexually active, but no signs of assault. No DNA evidence was found on the body. Cause of death was strangulation. Victim presents with ligature marks around her neck. She was killed earlier this morning, Maybe around 4 am. The only other piece of physical evidence was the Queen of Hearts playing card found on the body."
I could feel the eyes of everyone in the room staring at me. Sympathetic stares. Only it was like that fake sympathy that people give you at funerals. I thought back to my father's funeral. All the strangers that came up to tell me how sorry they were for my loss but none of them really cared. Even at seven years old I could tell that they were trying to save face. They were just glad it wasn't them. Nothing that anyone could say would change the current circumstances.
Parker came back into the room and sat down across from me without saying a word. His knuckles were bruised and bloodied.
"One eyewitness reports that they saw a red sedan leaving the scene early this morning." Hanson stated.
"That's Ralph Walker's car," Parker said suddenly without looking up.
"So it is." Lloyd said. "But that's hardly enough for a warrant."
Parker stood up in his chair and stared down Lloyd.
"You know as well as I do that Ralph Walker is behind all of this!" he shouted.
"Take your seat, Officer," Lloyd said calmly.
"So, we're just going to let him go again?! Big surprise!"
"Whose fault was it that we let him go the first time?!" Lloyd shouted.
Parker stared him down.
"Now, take your seat!" Lloyd demanded.
You could cut the tension with a knife. The two stared each other down and Parker finally returned to his seat.
"There are rules here, Officer. Rules that have been put in place that we must follow. Do you think I want him to walk again? We'll bring him down, but we've got to do it the right way."
Parker ignored him.
"Now, other than the red sedan, there were no other eyewitness reports of any disturbances. It could be related, or it could be nothing."
Parker scoffed.
Lloyd looked over at him angrily, but Parker avoided eye contact.
"What we need to do is maintain a steady focus and sift through the evidence of the case."
"So, this is it?" Officer Marone asked.
"What do you mean?" Lloyd asked.
"The old murders ended with the Queen of Hearts. Does that mean that this is it?" she asked.
Lloyd glanced over at me.
"I'm not sure," he said.
"Well if it is, we're screwed." Parker said. "We're just going to sit here playing cops and never do a damn thing about it. We've got no leads; no evidence and our prime suspect has got our Chief wrapped around his little finger."
"That's enough Officer-," Lloyd began.
"No," Parker said standing from his chair again. "This whole system is fried! He kills four women and gets away with it because we are trying so hard to be politically correct and cover our own asses. It's shit!"
Parker stormed out of the room and left the rest of us in silence.
"Everyone finishes your paperwork and we can start sending some people home. Get some fresh eyes on this tomorrow."
We all uncomfortably got back to the mounds of paperwork in front of us.
Officer Marone came up to me when my face was buried in a folder.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she said.
I looked up at her and was drawn directly into her eyes.
I noticed that her hair was down, and she looked like a walking vision of Rachel Walker.
I looked away from her but smiled an appreciative smile.
There was something sincere in the way that she had said this.
"Thank you," I said.
As she walked by me, her hand rested on my shoulder and she patted me there before she walked away.
At about midnight, Lloyd came up to my desk.
"You understand that we have to talk to you, right?" he asked.
I nodded my head.
"Alright. Whenever you're ready, let me know and we'll go to one of the interrogation rooms. It'll be quieter in there."
When I sat down in the chair the room seemed so much different from the other side of the table. I stared at the two-way mirror and I thought about Rachel Walker. How no matter what was on the other side of that mirror, I was starting to think that I would never know.
Lloyd sat down across from me and placed a notepad and pen on the table in front of him.
"We'll make this brief; I just need to ask you a few things," he said.
"Go ahead," I answered.
"When was the last time that you saw Amber?" he asked and began writing, looking down at the notepad.
"Yesterday morning," I said.
"Where was she last night?" he asked, not lifting his head. I hadn't told anybody yet that she had left me.
"I'm not really sure," I said.
"Aren't the two of you living together? Isn't it odd that she wasn't there last night?"
"She left me yesterday morning," I admitted. Lloyd seemed a bit taken aback as he stopped writing and looked up at me. Not only was he walking on eggshells because she had just died, now he had opened a whole new fresh wound.
"Did she say where she was going?" he asked, returning to the notepad.
"Yes," I said and paused briefly as he continued to write.
Then, he stopped writing and looked up from his notepad at me.
"Well?" he asked.
"She went to see Thomas Anderson," I said.
Lloyd put the pen down on the notepad.
"Thomas Anderson?" he asked, perplexed.
"That's right."
"What was the nature of her relationship with him?"
"She said she had been seeing him."
"She was seeing him?"
"That's what I said."
"How long had this been going on?"
"I just found out about it yesterday."
"And she was leaving to go see him," he confirmed.
"Yes."
"So, I'm just a little confused here. Can I just verify what you're telling me?" he asked.
"Go ahead," I said.
"You and Amber were living together until yesterday when she told you that she was leaving you because she was seeing Thomas Anderson and that was the last time you saw her."
"That's a good way of putting it, yes."
"Did Amber know Ralph Walker?" he asked.
I thought about the brief encounter that I had seen the two of them have at the station. Ralph Walker's gaze seemed to linger for an eternity on Amber as he looked her up and down.
"I don't know, maybe."
"You don't know if she knew Ralph Walker?" he asked.
"I didn't know she was sleeping with Thomas Anderson either!" I snapped.
Lloyd looked a bit surprised.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's okay, I know this is a lot to take in." he said.
"Do you know if anybody would have wanted to hurt Amber?" he asked.
"I can't think of anyone," I said.
"Do you know if Thomas Anderson would have had something to do with this?"
"I have no idea."
"This should be the last question, and this is strictly following protocol," he started.
I nodded my head.
"Where were you last night?"
"I was home," I said.
"Can anybody confirm that?" he asked.
I shook my head no. "I sort of passed out yesterday morning. When I came to, I didn't feel like seeing anybody last night. Not after she left."
"Alright, well that should be it for now," he said and let me go.
I left the room and looked to the right in the hallway by the two-way mirror to see who was on the other side of it, watching my interrogation. To my surprise, there was nobody there. When I got back into the station, Parker was still gone.
Lloyd finished writing up his notes and then came out of the room and retired to his office. I sat at my desk for a few more hours before I finally decided that it was time to go home. It was late, probably 11 pm. As I packed up my things, the door to the station violently swung open and Parker stormed in the door.
"Thomas Anderson drives a red sedan," he said.
♥ ♥ ♥
"Thomas Anderson leases a red 2001 Lexus. He was probably the last person to see Amber alive and he had a relationship to all of the victims," Parker said.
We had stayed up until the sun came up the next morning reviewing the evidence of the case and Thomas Anderson's background. Parker had come back to the station during my interview and had watched from behind the mirror. When he heard me mention Thomas Anderson, he left to do some digging.
"Thomas Anderson was seeing Amber Faraway, the Queen of Hearts. Olivia Greene, the Queen of Clubs was a client of his, briefly. He was Abigail Thompson's boss, the Queen of Spades. And he was the lawyer of the Queen of Diamonds, Rachel Walker."
Parker slapped the paper with his hand.
"This can't be a coincidence," Parker said.
"A few hours ago, you were sure it was Ralph Walker," Hanson said.
"Circumstances have changed," Parker said, shooting a look in Hanson's direction.
I thought about the night a couple of days ago when Parker had beaten Ralph Walker to a quivering pulp. Had it all been for nothing?
"How badly do you want him?" Lloyd interrupted.
"I won't blow this again." Parker said.
"Then bring him in," Lloyd said.
Lloyd decided to send Parker and I to interview Thomas Anderson. My blood boiled as we approached the familiar office building.
This was probably a conflict of interest on my part, but we were so understaffed that I was the only viable option as back up. Besides, Lloyd had decided that Parker and I worked well as an interrogation team and regardless of Parker's folly, we were being groomed for Detective to replace he and Hanson.
We pulled up outside the office building when Parker turned to me.
"How are you feeling with all of this?" he asked.
"Fine," I said.
"Are you sure you can handle this?" he asked.
I looked Parker up and down. He was beginning to look homeless.
Are you sure you can handle this, I thought, but I nodded that I was up to the task?
"Then let's go get this son of a bitch," he said.
We left the car and headed inside of the Anderson & Partners building. There was a woman with dark hair and pale features seated at the reception desk who I had never seen before. Anderson sure had a type.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"We're here to see Thomas Anderson," Parker demanded.
"And you are?"
"Police," Parker said, flashing his badge.
"One moment please," she said and picked up the phone.
"Mr. Anderson, two police officers are here to see you."
I couldn't make out what was said on the other line. The woman hung up the phone.
"Mr. Anderson will see you in his office," the woman said and gestured up the staircase.
Parker and I headed up the same staircase that we had chased Brad Miller on two separate occasions. This place was becoming too familiar.
"Gentlemen," Anderson began with a crooked smile. "To what do I owe the privilege?"
"We've got a few questions for you if you wouldn't mind coming down to the station," Parker said determined.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Anderson said. "Unless you plan to arrest me, I won't be going anywhere."
Parker's face distorted in anger.
"Then we can talk right here," he said.
Anderson gestured toward his office and we walked in and sat down.
"I was wondering when you would show up," he said directing towards me.
"So, you know why we're here?" Parker asked.
"I believe it's fairly obvious," Anderson answered.
"Then why don't we cut to the chase," Parker said. "Did you kill Amber Faraway?"
"Did I what?" Anderson scoffed. "I did no such thing."
"When was the last time that you saw her?"
"The last time I saw her, she was very much alive," he chuckled.
I wanted to reach over the desk and strangle him.
"Do you want to explain that comment?" Parker asked.
"She came over two nights ago. We had sex and she left."
"Wasn't she staying with you?" Parker asked.
"She gave me some sob story about how she had just left her boyfriend and needed a place to stay."
"And?"
"And I told her to get lost," he said and smiled.
Parker glared at him angrily.
"Is this some kind of joke to you?" he asked.
"It helps me cope to find the humor in such tragic circumstances," he answered sardonically.
"Where were you the other night between the hours of 3 am and 5 am?"
"Are you asking where I was when Amber was murdered?" he asked.
"Yes, answer the question," Parker demanded.
"Well, I hate to break this to you Officer, but it couldn't have been me."
"And why is that?"
"Because around that time I had my arms around another woman," he said and fixed his gaze on me.
"Oh really? Would this woman be able to confirm that?"
"I would think so."
"Then would you mind telling us who this other woman is?"
"Of course, Officer. I believe you've met her before. Her name is Lauren Wilson."