Chapter 11 Dinah
Dinah
“Dinah?” Freddie sounds surprised, like he didn’t just tell me to call him.
“Yes, it’s me,” I snap. Downstairs, the front door slams shut, and the entire frame of Mom’s house shudders in response. I move to the window and push the faded-red curtain to the side, hoping to see Joe’s SUV.
“They sent me the autopsy results.”
“Yes, I know. You texted me about it. I was there for it, so I’m a step ahead of you.”
“Yeah. So, it says Reese Bishop still had three or four months to live.”
I blow out a breath, annoyed with this conversation. He was a trainee not assigned to this case, someone who shouldn’t have even received the autopsy report. “Okay, so?”
“So, why kill herself now? Why not wait and live a little longer?”
“Have you ever been terminally ill, Freddie?” Joe’s vehicle isn’t on the street, but from this vantage point I can see as my younger sister steps off the porch and walks down the driveway, her phone to her ear.
I slowly move the handle of the window crank, opening it until I can hear the faint sound of her voice.
“... told you that. We’re about to eat.”
“Well, no,” Freddie says. “But—”
“Maybe she didn’t want to move into hospice, didn’t want to have a heart attack at work, didn’t want to become a burden to her family.
Is this the only thing you don’t like about the autopsy?
That her expiration date was too far out for you?
” I hiss the words, not wanting my conversation to carry down to Marci.
“Well, that’s a rather crass way to put it,” he says diplomatically, and I bet this guy listens to self-help podcasts and cold plunges each morning.
I close my eyes and tell myself to chill.
He’s a baby, I remind myself. When I was his age, I found everything suspicious.
Everything. Even the things that were just normal human behavior, like a newlywed husband who worked late every night yet never answered his office line.
Being suspicious doesn’t mean you’re valid.
It doesn’t matter if Reese Bishop had four months left to live.
Sometimes people want to die. Sometimes they need help.
That’s what this is, period. As much as this trainee would love a juicy murder investigation, our job is to verify the suicide and move on so this is cleared from Rita’s desk by the time she returns from maternity leave.
If I didn’t hate Ron Memphis so much, I’d call and tell him to get this guy to back off and focus on parking-ticket warrants or something else that’s light-years away from this case.
“Look, Freddie. We’re good. Focus on other things.
We’ll wait on toxicology and see if the daughter shows up in the next forty-eight hours.
We have her credit cards flagged and the APB out.
A traffic cam or something will catch her car. She’ll move and we’ll get her.”
“Toxicology takes weeks. We don’t want this to go cold.”
There it is again. We. Is this how they do it in Montebello? Let rookies run apeshit? I inhale deeply and force myself to count to five before responding. “Freddie, other than you really wanting this to be a murder, what evidence is there? Forced entry? Sign of a struggle? Insurance money? Motive?”
There is silence on his end, just like I knew there would be. No. The answers are no, no, no, no. We need at least three of the four in order to get a warrant, and more stacked on that in order to get the DA to approve an arrest and go after a conviction.
I’d gone over Reese’s scene with a fine-tooth comb, and there was nothing there that pointed to murder. Nothing.
“Maybe there’s no forced entry or sign of a struggle because it was the daughter.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t the daughter. Matricide is a one-in-a-million statistic. It doesn’t happen.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t like the missing daughter,” he says stubbornly. “No credit card activity in over forty-eight hours—that’s strange.”
“What about the daughter’s phone?” It’s a question I already know the answer to, but if he wants to chase a dead lead, I’ll at least point out the holes for him.
“Its location is turned off, but it’s got data pings all over. It’s on the move, but it’s odd activity. I’m not certain it wasn’t dumped somewhere.”
For a patrol officer, this guy has a lot of opinions.
“She’s not a seasoned criminal, Freddie. She’s twenty years old. She’s not dumping her cell, at least not intentionally. Maybe she lost it, or it was stolen, or she’s couch surfing with friends.”
“It’s a lot of maybe s.”
“Okay, so let’s talk through the major ones,” I concede. Below me, Marci glances toward the house and then walks quickly down the driveway, her phone still stuck to her ear.
I lean forward, wondering who she’s talking to. “We have a missing girl with a dead mom. Option A: she has no idea what’s happened and is off doing something. Which, I agree with you, isn’t likely but something we should still consider.”
He grunts and I pull the curtains closed, interrupting the distraction. “Option B: she found or watched her mom do it, freaked out, and ran. Also fairly unlikely, though grief does strange things to people—”
“Option C,” he interrupts. “She killed her and ran.”
God, this guy is morbid. I make a face. “Right. And ... option D: someone else killed Reese, then killed or took Jessica.”
“Yes,” he confirms, though what exactly he’s confirming, I’m not sure. “What are you doing right now?” he asks.
“I’m at a birthday party over in Glendale.”
“Want to skip out on it and go over the crime scene photos? We could meet at Baby’s in an hour.”
I haven’t been to Baby’s Coffee in weeks and weaken at the thought of their iced latte. But as much as I’d love to run from my family and their questions, there’s still a chance Joe will show up. I have to stay.
“No, I need to be here for a few hours.” I glance at the white bedside clock, its red numbers still an hour off, even two decades later. “I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe we can meet up then.”
“Awesome,” he responds.
I grimace but say nothing. As if in response, my call-waiting beeps in.
It’s Joe.