Chapter 60
Tuesday afternoon
JP hated going back over ground he’d already covered.
Usually, it meant the answer should’ve been obvious the first time.
But sometimes people remembered things differently after the shock wore off.
Sometimes they noticed details only after somebody asked the right question.
And sometimes they only talked when they realized the story wasn’t over.
By late afternoon, JP was back in El Cajon walking the alley behind the duplex where Todd Maddox died.
The place felt different today, less dangerous, more sad. The stucco was still faded, and the railings were rusted, but now it had some plastic toys near one doorway and a shopping cart half-filled with clothes near the dumpster. Life stacked on top of struggle.
JP started with the same apartments police had canvassed. Most people remembered exactly what they’d already told officers. There was yelling, a girl screaming, then sirens. Nothing useful.
At the fourth unit, a middle-aged man in a white tank top shook his head before JP finished the question. “I told the cops already.”
“I know.”
“I saw the brunette girl. That’s it.”
“Anybody else?”
“Nope.” The door closed.
At the next apartment, a woman holding a toddler repeated almost word-for-word what was in Nelson’s report. There was a fight, a man yelling, a young girl running, no second person, and no suspicious car. No help. Dead ends stacked one after another.
By six o’clock, JP was beginning to think the second trip had been a waste of time. Then he knocked on a downstairs corner unit near the alley entrance. An older woman answered after several seconds with a cigarette in one hand and suspicion already built into her expression.
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
JP showed his investigator ID. “I’m following up on the Maddox homicide.”
Recognition flickered. “That girl killed him.”
“Maybe.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You don’t sound convinced.”
JP ignored that. “You spoke to police already?”
“Briefly.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“I heard yelling. I saw a girl run.”
“Brunette?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that all you saw?”
The woman hesitated.
“What?”
She shifted the cigarette between fingers. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
That was usually when things were important.
“What didn’t matter?”
“The other girl.”
A sighting! “Where did you see her?”
The woman pointed vaguely toward the alley. “The blonde one.”
“When did you see her?”
“After all the screaming started.”
“Tell me exactly what you saw,” JP said.
The woman glanced past him into the parking lot like she was replaying it. “I heard yelling first, a man screaming, then a girl screaming back.”
“Then?”
“I looked outside, and I saw the blonde girl came running out first.”
“Running where?”
“Toward the back alley.” She pointed again.
“And the brunette?”
The woman frowned, thinking carefully now. “She came out a minute or so after. Just a few seconds, maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less.”
“Was she running too?”
“Yes. But she looked confused, like she didn’t know which way to go.” Another drag off the cigarette. “She kept looking back toward the duplex.”
JP felt something move into place.
“Did she go after the blonde?”
“No.”
“What’d she do?”
“She stopped near the end of the street.” The woman pointed again. “She stayed there a second like she was waiting for someone.”
“Did she go back inside?”
The woman hesitated again. “No. She ran off down the street. I couldn’t see very far from where I was.”
“Did you see anyone else go in that home?”
“The blonde girl came back and went inside.”
That was new! “Did you see her come back out?”
“No. But my phone rang, and I had to go inside to get the call. When I came back out, everything must’ve been over because no one came or went until the cops came.”
“Did you tell Detective Nelson all this?”
The woman looked mildly offended. “I would’ve if he’d asked.”
“He’s usually pretty thorough. I’m surprised he didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“If he did, I don’t remember. I was a little under the weather.”
JP wondered what that meant. Was she sick? Under the influence? He started to question her credibility.
He looked toward the alley.
The woman watched him carefully. “Did that blonde girl kill him too?”
“I don’t know.”
But the timeline worked well. Bay stabbed him and ran. The blonde girl returned, but no other witnesses saw it. Which meant one thing became very easy to believe. Hannah Caldwell might have finished what Bay started.
As JP walked toward his truck, he already knew that Sabre was going to hate this new version. Yet it made emotional sense.