20. Ozzie
CHAPTER 20
Ozzie
J aw cracking with a wide yawn, I blinked the moisture from my eyes as I turned onto a dirt road from the highway. The last two days had been busy. After delving into Warren Hammond’s brother, Darren, I’d worked on some of my other active cases, prepped for court for one of them, and caught another for a stolen car. Last night, I thought I would sleep like the dead, but Claire invaded my dreams, and we’d acted out that elevator scenario. Multiple times.
When my alarm went off this morning, I jerked awake, still aroused and exhausted.
The arousal part had improved as I dove into work, but the exhaustion hadn’t. I’d been an hour, tops, away from going home and crashing when she called.
Now, I was not only lengthening my day—probably considerably—I was most likely guaranteeing another restless night by having fresh memories of Claire front and center in my mind.
Maybe I should just say screw it and take her up on her offer.
Minus the elevator.
I inhaled a breath and let it out on a groan. Would Riggs believe we were seeing each other before the murder?
Immediately, I slapped down that idea. Lying to the boss was never a good plan, especially in my profession. Besides, Riggs already knew from the conversations we had about this case that I didn’t know Claire beforehand.
Another yawn overtook me. I ran a hand through my hair and over my face. Solving the problem wouldn’t happen tonight. I was too tired.
Eight minutes later, my headlights washed over Claire’s Land Rover. I pulled up behind her and put the truck in park, leaving it running, then got out.
She met me outside her driver’s door.
“Thanks for coming.” She huddled into her coat against the wind that had picked up in the last hour or so and offered me a strained smile.
It was enough to kick my heart rate into overdrive as memories of my dreams sparked.
I willed them back into their box. “Of course. You want to lead the way? Or we can take my truck.” I tipped my head toward the vehicle.
“Just follow me. I don’t want to leave my car here.”
With a nod, I took a step back toward my pickup. “Sounds good. How far is it?”
“Ten minutes or so.”
A frown pulled at the corners of my mouth. She’d been out here alone and that far out with no cell signal? “Okay. Don’t lose me.”
“I won’t.” She opened her car door.
Taking that as my cue, I turned and jogged the few feet back to the truck, climbing inside. Her brake lights lit up, then she put the SUV in gear.
Less than a minute into the drive, my phone lost signal. I had a radio, but I wasn’t sure it would work out here. To the south, the faint glow that was Juneau lit up the sky over the mountaintops. If there was no transmitter on the summit, I wouldn’t be able to quickly call for help unless there was a ranger or a state trooper on this side of it. This truly was the sticks.
Claire’s brake lights glowed, then her blinker lit up, and she turned onto another dirt road, this one barely wide enough for a single vehicle. The forest closed around us, blocking out most of the starlight. It was like driving into a blackhole.
Several minutes later, she braked again, making another turn. When she crawled along at just under twenty miles an hour, I knew we had to be close.
I saw the fabric flapping in the wind at the same time Claire braked again. She rolled to a stop and parked. I pulled in behind her.
“Here we go,” I muttered. Shutting off the engine, I went around the vehicle to the passenger side and opened the rear door. The patrol truck had a storage compartment built into the backseat. Grabbing a flashlight and my evidence kit, I closed the door and walked toward Claire.
“It’s back there.” She raised the black flashlight in her hand and pointed. The beam bounced off the pine boughs and the colorful fabric waving like a windsock. It took me a moment, but I recognized it as the scarf she’d worn Saturday when I ran into her at The Cozy Cup.
“That was genius.” I motioned to the scarf.
“Thanks. I knew I’d never find it again if I didn’t mark it. I don’t know how I found it in the first place. Probably because I was looking for that road we turned off of a couple minutes ago. I saw the shine in my headlights and thought it was unusual. There’s nothing out here but a cabin and a few ramshackle hunting blinds.” A gust of wind hit, and she raised her shoulders, shielding her ears.
Gooseflesh erupted on my neck and down my arms inside my coat. “Let’s go take a look before this weather system fully arrives. I don’t want to get caught out in the snow.”
“Me, either.” She opened the rear door and removed her crutch, then stepped off the road.
I snagged her coat sleeve. “You sure you should be walking through there?” I gestured to the boot on her foot.
She glanced down, then shrugged. “It already aches. The car isn’t that far in. I’ll be fine.”
Lips clamped together tightly, I narrowed my eyes. “How about you wait in your car?”
“Uh-uh. It’s too creepy.” She waved a hand. “I’m not one who normally gets the willies in the woods, but tonight?” She shook her head. “There’s just something about all this that’s just… It’s weird.” With her light, she shooed me toward the trees. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time and the storm’s only getting closer.”
I didn’t like it, but I understood her reasoning. I could also see by the set to her jaw and the look in her eyes she wouldn’t stay behind unless I handcuffed her in the back of my truck.
“Fine.” I swept out a hand, indicating she should lead the way.
Without a word, she hobbled down the embankment and entered the forest.
Just a few feet in, I saw the car. Most of it was hidden by the trees, but the badge on the front grille was unmistakable.
“Stay here.” I held up a hand to Claire as we got close.
She halted, reaching behind her head to raise her hood. “It came in from another direction. There are tire tracks behind it. I walked all the way around it.”
Nodding, I moved forward, watching my step. Small branches and pine needles crunched under my boots. A few feet from the car, I stopped, shining my light over the ground. Claire’s lopsided fresh prints stood out, but there were some older ones, mostly near the driver’s door. The ground cover wasn’t quite as springy there as elsewhere.
I tucked my light under my arm and took the digital camera from my evidence kit. Making sure the flash was on, I snapped a few pictures.
It certainly looked like the right car. Taking careful steps and photographing as I went, I reached the back.
The license plate matched. I still needed to look at the VIN to confirm it, but I’d put money on this being Hammond’s vehicle.
Continuing around the other side, nothing else stood out except the tire tracks disappearing into the darkness. I took a peek through the SUV’s windows, and saw it was empty, as Claire said.
It was also extremely clean. There were even vacuum tracks in the carpet in the passenger footwell. Either Hammond was a complete neat-freak, or someone had thoroughly cleaned the car before dumping it in the woods.
My question was whether that someone was Warren.
After snapping a picture of the VIN, I walked back to Claire.
“All done?” She peered at me from beneath her hood. In the light from my flashlight, I could see the redness on the end of her nose.
“For now. I want to double-check the VIN, then I need to see if I can get a message to the station on the radio.”
“It’s Warren’s car, isn’t it?” She fell into step beside me as I started toward the road.
“I think so. The license plate matches. Unless someone put his plate on the exact same car, it’s his.”
“And you still don’t know where he is? Did you find his brother?”
“Not exactly. I found his name and social media pages. From what I can tell, he lives in Indonesia.”
“Indonesia? What?” Incredulity laced her tone.
“Yeah. Surprised me too. He owns an import-export business. I haven’t been able to contact him yet, though. He has little info about his company on his social media pages, and I have, so far, struck out searching state databases for business holdings in his name. A judge granted me a warrant late yesterday so I could submit a request to the IRS for any information on his company. I was also granted one to get access to Warren Hammond’s passport usage from Customs and Border Protection. But I haven’t heard back from either agency yet.” Hopefully, it wouldn’t take weeks for them to run their searches.
Every day I spent investigating was another day Hammond’s trail ran cold. Even if I could track him to a specific city, if he went off the grid, I would have to rely on witnesses to help me locate him, and memories faded with time. The sooner I could pin down where he went—if he’d indeed left the area—the better.
We broke through the trees, reaching the road. I jogged ahead of her to my truck and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
Claire walked up, but stopped short of climbing in. An eyebrow winged upward as she eyed the bottom of the doorframe, then lifted her booted foot. “Not sure that’s going to work.”
“It’s not that much higher than your car.” I backed away, reaching for the rear passenger door. “Hang on.” Opening the door, I tossed my evidence kit and flashlight onto the backseat, then returned to her side. Reaching into the cab, I plucked the manila folder with my case notes off the seat and put it on the dash. “Okay. Let me help you in.” I held out a hand.
She tucked a gloved hand into mine and pushed off the ground with her good leg. Slipping my other hand under her elbow, I guided her in.
“Thank you.” She swung her legs in, and I took her crutch and closed the door.
After retrieving the camera from the backseat and stowing the crutch, I joined her up front.
“Dig into that folder and find the page with Hammond’s vehicle information, would you?” I gestured to the folder on the dash, then started the truck, getting the heater going again, before picking up the radio mic.
“Sure.” She poked the button above our heads to turn on the cab lights, then grabbed the folder. The soft rustle of papers filled the confined space.
I turned up the volume on my radio, then checked the frequency and said a prayer dispatch could hear me as I pressed the transmission button. “PL-two-twelve to dispatch, over.” I lifted my thumb and waited.
Static erupted, then Hailey Branson’s voice filled the car. “PL-two-twelve, go ahead.”
Relief flooded my veins. Things just got much simpler. I pressed the transmission button again. “Dispatch, PL-two-twelve. I’m on-scene of a ten-twenty-eight. Silver BMW X5. Requesting a tow truck to my location. And let Chief Riggs know. I have limited cell reception out here.”
“PL-two-twelve, Dispatch, copy. Contacting A-1 Wrecking to dispatch to your location and contacting Chief Riggs. All correct? Over.”
“Dispatch, PL-two-twelve, all correct, over.”
“PL-two-twelve, Dispatch. We’ll contact you when resources are en route, out.”
I hung up the mic and looked at Claire. “Did you find the vehicle information?”
She pointed to the open folder.
“Great.” I turned on the camera. “Let’s see if we have a match.” I pulled up the stored photos and found the one I took of the VIN. “I’m going to read it off. You ready?”
“Yep.”
I read off the combination of letters and numbers, then glanced up, meeting her gaze.
“It’s a match,” she said.
“That’s what I figured.” Switching the camera off, I stretched an arm between the seats and slipped it back into the evidence collection case. “I’m not sure what good it’ll do to have it, though. It looked clean. Too clean.” I chewed on the corner of my mouth, staring through the windshield at the darkened forest as my mind turned. “Who owns the property you were out here to list?” I glanced at her.
“Robert McGuffey.”
“What do you know about him? Is he a long-time resident? Did he say why he was selling?”
“He’s elderly, and his health took a turn. He decided to move in with his son in Seattle. Are you thinking Warren knows him?”
“Maybe.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. From the sound of it, though, I doubted the two were acquainted. “Has he been out of town a lot? You said his health was poor.”
Claire nodded. “I actually met with his son tonight and talked to Robert via FaceTime. He’s in Seattle, recovering from heart surgery.”
“Do people know his house is vacant? That no one’s out here?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Probably, some, yes. But there are so many places to dump a car up here, it’s not even funny. Why would he pick a place where someone might find it sooner rather than later?”
That was a damn good question.
“Unless he wanted it to be found.”
I frowned in question. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe he needed to ditch it, but wanted it found. It could be Warren isn’t the killer, and he hid the car to throw off the real murderer.”
“But why hide it?” I asked. “And clean it? If he wanted the killer to think he left town, why not just abandon it at the airport, or even just leave it in his driveway and call a taxi to the airport? And there would be no reason to detail it before dumping it.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Who’s to say he didn’t detail it before Marie died? That’s entirely possible. You saw their house. It was neat as a pin. And it always looks like that. If anything, it was sparse. Lynne was going to add furniture because they didn’t have enough. Normally, she has to take pieces out and then add some décor to give it a cohesive look.”
I thought about the Hammonds’ house. Claire wasn’t wrong. It was exceptionally clean and well-organized. I’d chalked that up to the fact they were selling it, though.
“You’re sure it was always like that?”
“Yes. From what I saw, anyway. I asked Marie about it too. She said they didn’t like clutter. And since they didn’t have children, two of the bedrooms weren’t needed, which is why they were empty. There was an office downstairs where Warren worked sometimes. Marie only brought grading home and could do that on the couch or at the dining table. The third spare bedroom was their gym.”
The more I learned about the Hammonds—Warren, specifically—the more I wondered what they’d been up to. Their daily habits and the way they lived were just… strange. From their spartan house to the secrets they kept from each other and the people in their lives, it all screamed they had bigger things to hide.
Tomorrow, I needed to put the screws to the IRS and Customs. The answer to what skeletons lurked in the Hammonds’ closet was likely in that information.
“They never mentioned anyone who might have been a friend? Someone who might check on their house while they’re away? Bring in their mail? Or maybe just be someone they talked to on a regular basis?”
She glanced away for a moment, her forehead furrowing, then shook her head. “No. I don’t think either of them mentioned anyone except their family.”
Mouth pressed flat, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and looked outside again. “Okay.” Blowing out a breath, I turned back to her.
In the harsh overhead light, the pinch to her face created deep shadows under her eyes. I touched her arm. “You doing okay? How’s the leg?”
“It’s fine.” She glanced down, briefly.
For half a second, I thought about calling her out on the blatant lie. She’d already admitted it hurt, and her face said it hurt more than a little. But that wouldn’t do anything except make her put up her guard and drive a wedge between us.
Though the latter might not be a bad thing. It would help me keep my hands to myself. Because right now, all I wanted to do was haul her into my arms and make her forget her leg hurt.
She looked up again, her gaze locking with mine. Need unfurled in my stomach and heated my blood.
I clenched the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt, trying to hold on just as tightly to my control.
Swallowing hard, I broke the stare. “You should head home. Get it propped up. I don’t need anything else from you here.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. They did not come out the way I intended.
Her little harrumph said it all. She slapped the folder onto the dash and reached for the door before I could explain myself.
I scrambled out of the truck, running around to the other side before she could get out. It was a decent drop to the ground, and I’d parked close to the edge of the road. I didn’t want her to fall and reinjure herself.
“Let me help you out.” I reached for her arm, but she smacked my hands away.
“I can get out of a truck, Detective.”
Even in just the glow from the interior light and my headlights, I could see the fire flashing in her blue eyes. “This is going to be a thing with us, isn’t it? I make you mad, and you resort to my title?” I pushed past her waving arms and wrapped my hands around her waist, lifting her out of the truck.
“Since I’m nothing more than a person connected to your case, I think it’s… fitting.” Her voice trailed away, the last word coming out quiet and hesitant as her body made contact with mine.
I knew how she felt. Words were stuck in my throat too.
Through the heavy layer of her coat, warmth seeped into my hands. Her breath washed over my face, the sweet scent like a drug that went straight to my head.
All the reasons why this was a bad idea blew away with the wind, and I did what I promised myself I wouldn’t do again until this case was resolved.
I kissed her.