Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Don’t start,” I told Ethan when his eyes narrowed and his frown deepened. “It’s been ten days. Staples came out Friday. I’m good.”
He glanced down at my shoulder.
“That’s fine, too,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes as I pulled my chair out and sat across from him at my desk.
“Anderson’s gonna chew your ass out for being here,” Ethan returned.
I knew she was, but I had a plan for that. It centered around a lot of groveling. I couldn’t take sitting at home another day. Especially while there was a homicide to solve.
“Then hurry up and get me up to speed so when she comes in, I can plead my case. I’m willing to ride the pine and do the leg work.”
“You must be bored out of your mind. You’ve never offered to do paperwork or sit a desk.”
He was correct on all accounts. I hated sitting at my desk. But anything was better than sitting on my couch doing literally nothing.
“You have no idea,” I mumbled.
Ethan reached for a stack of folders sitting on his desk and offered them to me.
I opened the top folder to a glossy eight-by-ten picture of a smiling Ashley Monroe. And that was how I remembered the woman. Not the sheet-white dead woman with matted hair.
“I spent last week talking to her parents, co-workers, the principal of Deer Park, her friends, and her ex-boyfriend.”
“What’s the ex have to say?” I asked.
It was an unfortunate truth that fifty-five percent of murdered women were killed by an intimate partner.
“Josh Holman. He was devastated, and if he was lying, he should be an actor and not a roofer. The guy lost it. He also has an alibi. GBI puts time of death, same as Anna’s initial assessment—one to three days.
Cause of death, strangulation. Josh Holman was out of town visiting his brother’s family in Ohio.
He left two days before the timeframe Ashley was killed and didn’t return home until the day after we found her.
GBI confirmed if she’d been in that pond two extra days, decomp would’ve been severe and the fish in the pond would’ve started feeding. ”
The horrors of death never ended.
“Her co-workers loved her, said she was a great teacher, great with the kids, and as far as they knew she didn’t have any issues with any parents.”
Fuck. I hadn’t thought of the parents.
Ethan went on, “The principal confirmed he’d never received any complaints or criticism from any of the parents.
The opposite actually—everyone loved her.
Kids. Parents. Other teachers. Her friends the same, devastated, confused, they had no idea who would want to hurt her.
And not one of them even hinted that Josh could or would hurt her.
All of them said that she broke up with Josh.
She loved him, but he had no ambition, and she wanted more out of life.
None of them had anything bad to say about him, beyond Ashley and Josh weren’t a good fit, but he was a nice guy who liked to go to a local dive bar near his house after work with his buds, tied one on occasionally but not a drunk.
Ashley wasn’t a dive bar kinda woman. She liked going out to nice places and if she went to a bar it would be upscale.
“Her parents still live in Charleston. That’s where she grew up.
They came down and…fuck, Jase, it hurt just looking at them, their pain was so absolute.
They hadn’t seen her since school let out the last term.
She went up for a quick visit. They said she was happy, healthy, and looking forward to closing on the house she bought, then moving in.
It was her first big purchase. They planned on coming down next month to help Ashley with some repairs on the house.
They also said Ashley was a little sad about her breakup but not torn up and they’d met and liked Josh, but weren’t surprised they didn’t go the distance. ”
The phone on Ethan’s desk rang. He held up a finger and answered it, “Lenox.”
I went back to the file, flipping through Ethan’s typed up notes.
Twenty-six. Happy. Healthy. Well-liked. Excited about owning a home. Now she was dead, fished out of a pond with leaves and debris in her hair.
Christ.
“Yeah. Thanks, Whitty, we’ll meet you there.”
I looked at Ethan, took in his clenched jaw and braced.
He didn’t delay explaining what had him tweaked.
“Samantha Williams was just pulled out of a runoff pond behind the sand mill.”
Fucking hell.
I followed Ethan through the bullpen out the back door.
When we were approaching our unmarked sedan when Ethan said, “You’re not cleared for duty. I’m driving and just so you know, if the Captain asks you, you strong-armed your way into the car and I couldn’t stop you.”
He was so full of shit. If the Captain asked questions Ethan would have my back.
“Right,” I mumbled and went to the passenger side.
I waited until we were out of the parking lot before I asked, “Anything from Dylan?”
“No. Which means he’s like a dog with a bone and is on a mission.”
Dylan on a mission could mean him hacking the NSA. Which would be easy for him to do since he worked there before TC.
“Didn’t even see him,” Ethan muttered. “Walking right fucking next to you and didn’t see the fucker until it was too late.”
That wasn’t the first time Ethan had brought up not seeing the guy who shot me.
“We’ve talked about this, E. Let it go. I didn’t see him either. He was in the shadows. The forest is thick. There was nothing you could’ve done differently.”
“You stepped in front of me, asshole. The least I could’ve done was catch you, so you didn’t crack your skull.”
At least he was joking about my fall.
“Though, maybe that hit to the head rattled something loose and knocked some sense into you,” he continued. “You’ve avoided the topic. Are you ready to talk about her yet?”
Rainy.
I dodged his questions all week. Mostly because I didn’t have answers.
“I’m taking my time. It’s not just us, we both have kids.”
“Yeah, Jase, kids that know each other. Juni and her boy are in the same class, right?”
They were and that was another level of complication I hadn’t thought of.
“Which means if this gets fucked our kids are tied up in it.”
I didn’t have to glance over to know Ethan had taken his eyes off the road to look at me.
“Please tell me your head’s not back up your ass,” he demanded.
“Fuck no. I want her back. I know she feels the same, but Friday after school when we all went out for ice cream—all of us—Cole, Juni, Lucas, me, and Rainy, I was reminded we have three kids in the mix that need to be handled with care and eased into a blending of families. I gave her a week of slow, texting only, getting her to a place where she’s comfortable.
She’s there. Now I need to work on the kids. I’m thinking another week.”
Ethan busted out laughing.
“Brother, I think your definition of slow isn’t really slow. A week?”
“Like you said, Juni and Lucas know each other. Cole and Lucas hit it off. I know the more they get to know each other that’ll be all good.
What needs to be handled carefully is introducing them to the idea of me and Rainy.
Unfortunately, Cole and Juni understand what divorce is.
Their mother is getting married, they already live with their stepfather, they get a third person being in their everyday lives.
I don’t think they’ll have a problem with me seeing someone.
Though I’ve never introduced them to a woman before, so I need to keep a close eye on that.
But Lucas doesn’t. It’s been him and Rainy his whole life with the only other constant besides his grandmother was Rainy’s best friend Zoe who recently died. ”
“Damn,” Ethan muttered. “How’s Rainy handling that?”
I checked our surroundings, mentally calculated we still had at least fifteen minutes before we hit the sand mine on the outskirts of town, and gave Ethan a rundown of what Rainy had told me, including the motherfucker Julian sending her flowers and Rainy’s suspicion about Julian being behind the car accident.
When I was done, I wasn’t surprised he asked, “Did you get a last name?”
“No, and before I could, Rainy had to run out the door to pick up Lucas.”
“We need a last name and address so we can pull the accident report.”
His response didn’t surprise me either.
“I’ve got the kids this week. So, dinner alone is out. And this isn’t a conversation I want to have over the phone so I’ll get that info next week, when the kids are back at Shay’s and I can convince Rainy to arrange a sleepover for Lucas with his grandma.”
“Dinner alone,” he repeated. “Does that mean, you’ll be arranging a family dinner?”
Ethan turned onto the gravel driveway of the sand mill. It was time to get back to police work but still I answered, “Fuck, yeah. Two if I can swing it.”
“Slow my ass,” he muttered as he rolled to a stop next to Whittman’s SUV and rolled down his window. “Where to?”
“Stay on the gravel road. When you see the sand elevators, hook a left. It’s the first pond behind the laydown yard. Wendy and Frank are up there with the foreman, and the guy who found her.” Whittman paused and shook his head. “Cap’s up there, too.”
Shit. Fuck. And damn.
“I’m just along for the ride. Unofficially, of course.”
Ethan chuckled.
Whitty waved us on.
“We need to shift gears from a missing person to a possible serial homicide.”
I didn’t have to explain that both the dumpsites being bodies of water was too big of a coincidence to disregard.
“As soon as we get back, we’ll check for crossover,” Ethan confirmed.
I went over what I knew about Samantha Williams. Thirty-one, single, no kids, and she worked at the Stewart-Hunter Family Center on the Army Base as a relocation coordinator. All of her co-workers and her boss had nothing but good things to say about her.
“Right before Samantha was reported missing, she broke up with Tate Hendrix,” I reminded Ethan.
“Tate is very dead so we can’t ask him his whereabouts, and depending on how long Samantha’s been dead, he might be ruled out completely.”
He wasn’t wrong.