Chapter 2 #3
She thought about it, then shook her head. “Nope. Just two guys stopping in like they always did.”
Jack pulled a card from his pocket. “If you think of anything else—the trainer’s name, anything they might have said about the gym—give me a call.”
She took the card, tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. “Yeah. Sure.”
The heat hit us like a wall when we stepped back outside. I squinted against the glare, my mind already sorting through what we’d learned. A trainer with cauliflower ears. A warehouse gym somewhere nearby. A young man named Dre who kept himself in shape and didn’t smoke.
It wasn’t much. But it was a start.
* * *
Cole was waiting by his truck, his Stetson pushed back and his face glistening with sweat. He’d found a sliver of shade next to the building, but it wasn’t doing much good. The heat radiated up from the asphalt in waves.
“Got anything?” Jack asked.
“Nail salon was a bust. Owner just took over the lease a few months back—doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t see anything, doesn’t want to get involved.
” Cole pulled his notebook from his back pocket and flipped it open.
“Check-cashing place was a different story. Lady behind the counter recognized the description before I finished giving it. Said he came in every Friday like clockwork to cash his paycheck.”
He paused, and something in his expression told me he had more.
“She pulled his records for me. Andre Tyrell Washington. Twenty-four years old. Paychecks came from King Construction—they’ve got a lot over on Miller Road.” Cole glanced up. “She said he was one of the nice ones. Always asked about her grandkids.”
Andre. Dre for short. We had a name now. A real name, attached to a real life—a job, co-workers, a routine. A young man who cashed his checks on Fridays and remembered to ask about an old woman’s grandkids.
“King Construction,” Jack said. “That’s Danny King’s outfit. He runs a decent operation—hires a lot of guys who need a second chance. Ex-military, men coming out of the system.”
“The check-cashing lady mentioned he used a military ID once,” Cole added. “When his regular license was expired.”
So Andre Tyrell Washington had served his country, worked construction, trained as a fighter, and ended up wrapped in a cheap blanket at the bottom of a dumpster. The shape of his life was starting to emerge—and with it, the people who might know why it had ended.
“We got a person of interest from the vape shop,” Jack said. “Older white guy, late forties or fifties. Broken nose, cauliflower ears, bad knees. The lady said he was Dre’s trainer. They came in together once a week or so.”
Cole nodded slowly, those pale blue eyes going distant the way they did when his mind was already three steps ahead, sorting through angles and possibilities like a man shuffling cards.
“I’ll run Andre Tyrell Washington through the system—priors, known associates, anything that pops.
And I’ll check boxing gyms, MMA facilities in the area.
Guy built like that, training with someone who knows what he’s doing, he’s registered somewhere.
Fighting’s not something you hide. Somebody knows him. ”
“We need to talk to his co-workers too,” Jack said. “And find that trainer. But let’s wait until J.J.’s done with the autopsy. She might find something that gives us better questions to ask.”
Cole glanced at me, a question in the look.
“A few hours,” I said. “I should have preliminary findings by late afternoon.”
“Works for me.” He fished his keys from his pocket, already moving toward his truck. “I’ll call when I’ve got something.”
We watched him go—that long, easy stride covering ground without ever seeming to hurry.
Jack’s hand found the small of my back as we turned toward the Tahoe. “Let’s get you to the funeral home.”
The parking lot had transformed while we’d been inside asking questions.
Cars filled the spaces now, and people moved between them with the purposeful energy of lunch hour—a woman balancing takeout bags and a cell phone, a man in a rumpled suit loosening his tie as he headed for the Chinese place, a young mother wrestling a toddler into a car seat while an older child kicked at the asphalt with light-up sneakers.
Jack opened my door—old habits died hard with him—and I slid into the passenger seat, grateful for the air-conditioning that had been running the whole time we’d been inside Cloud Nine.
He went around to the driver’s side and climbed in, and then pulled out of the lot, merging onto Route 3 with the ease of someone who knew these roads like the back of his hand.
“You’re quiet,” he said after a few minutes.
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“His hands.” I watched the strip malls and fast-food joints slide past, giving way to stretches of pine trees and the occasional farmhouse set back from the road. “The old breaks. The calluses. He’d been fighting for years, Jack. That kind of damage doesn’t happen overnight.”
“He’s got a trainer for a reason,” Jack said. “That suggests a level of professionalism in the sport.”
I shifted in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position. My lower back ached from hours of standing, and exhaustion was starting to creep in around the edges. “I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
He reached over and took my hand, his fingers warm and rough against mine.
We drove like that for a while, leaving behind the strip malls and chain restaurants of King George Proper as Route 3 curved north toward Bloody Mary.
The landscape shifted as we went—tract housing giving way to farmland, the occasional tobacco barn weathered silver by decades of sun and rain, hand-painted signs advertising fresh eggs and firewood for sale.
A red pickup truck passed us going the other direction, and Jack raised two fingers off the steering wheel in that universal rural greeting.
“Was that Bobby Hendricks?” I asked, craning my neck to look back.
“Looked like it. He had a woman in the passenger seat.”
“Not Marlene.”
“Definitely not Marlene. This one was blond.”
“Interesting.” I settled back in my seat. “Emmy Lu said she heard Marlene kicked him out last month. Apparently she found receipts in his pocket from the Comfort Inn over in Fredericksburg.”
“The Comfort Inn.” Jack shook his head. “If you’re going to step out on your wife, at least have some class about it.”
“Right? Take her somewhere nice. Make it worth losing half your assets.”
“I don’t think that’s the lesson here.”
“I’m just saying, if Marlene’s going to take him to the cleaners—and she will, her sister’s a divorce attorney in Richmond—he should have at least gotten some decent thread count out of it.”
Jack laughed. “You’re terrible.”
“I’m practical.” I watched the scenery roll past. “How long were they married? Fifteen years?”
“Something like that. Kids are in high school now.”
“That’s the part that gets me.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You do something like that, it’s not just your spouse you’re betraying. It’s your whole family.”
Jack squeezed my hand. “Some people don’t think past what they want in the moment.”
“Lucky for Bobby, Marlene’s been thinking. Emmy Lu said she’s been squirreling money away for two years. Had a feeling something was off.”
“Smart woman.”
“Always was. Too smart for Bobby Hendricks, that’s for sure.”
We passed the old Mercer place, where three generations of junk cars rusted in the front yard alongside a hand-lettered sign that read Trespassers Will Be Shot—Survivors Will Be Shot Again.
A few miles later, the white steeple of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church came into view, and then the town itself—Main Street with its antique shops and law offices, the Towne Square where old men gathered on benches to solve the world’s problems, and Martin’s Grocery Store.
Jack turned onto Catherine of Aragon, and the funeral home came into view where it sat on the corner—a three-story Colonial in dark red brick and white columns flanking the front entryway. Two massive elm trees shaded the front yard, their gnarled roots cracking the sidewalk.
Jack pulled under the metal portico on the side, where the black Suburban was already parked.
“What time do you think you’ll be done?” he asked.
“Between three and four,” I said. “Depends on what I find.”
“I’ll pick you up, and we can hit King’s Construction before they close for the day. And then we can grab dinner at Rosa’s.”
“You just want an excuse to flirt with Rosa.”
“She’s eighty-three years old.”
“And she lights up like a Christmas tree every time you walk in.” I leaned over and kissed him. “I’ll text you when I’m wrapping up.”
“Deal.”
I climbed out of the Tahoe and headed for the side door. I was almost to the ramp when Jack called out.
“Jaye.”
I turned. He was leaning out the window, sunglasses pushed up on his head, that familiar half smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Simple words. We said them all the time—tossed them out like spare change, easy and automatic. But sometimes, like now, they landed different. Heavier. A reminder that every goodbye could be the last one.
The kitchen was empty, stainless steel gleaming under the fluorescent lights.
I could hear Emmy Lu’s voice drifting from somewhere in the front of the house—probably on the phone with a family, her tone shifting into that mix of sympathy and efficiency she’d perfected over twenty years of helping people navigate the worst days of their lives.
A plate of snickerdoodles sat on the counter with a sticky note in Emmy Lu’s looping handwriting: Eat something.
I smiled despite myself. Between her and Jack, I’d never be allowed to skip a meal.
I grabbed two cookies and ate them standing at the counter, washing them down with a bottle of water from the fridge.
My stomach had finally settled after the dumpster smell this morning, and the sugar helped.
The reinforced steel door to the basement waited just off the kitchen. Beyond it, the victim waited too.
I tossed the empty bottle in the trash and headed downstairs to find out what the dead had to say.