P. Parrish - Thicker Than Water

Contents of stomach: partially digested beef, potatoes, bread, unidentified sugar liquid, alcohol.

Louis shifted his weight and the bed creaked. He was trying to see her now, trying to imagine where she had been, what she looked like, what she had done the night she died. She had worked that night at Hamburger Heaven. She had probably eaten a hamburger, fries and a Coke sometime during her shift.

Tissue analysis: nothing unusual.

Lung analysis: nicotine, potassium monopersulfate.

Okay, she was a smoker. And she had at least one drink about an hour before she was killed.

Mobley had said she was a “greaser,” the wilder crowd, the kids who smoked, drank, dropped out, got pregnant.

Louis flipped the page back to the internal organ analysis. She hadn’t been pregnant.

But she definitely had been raped. Semen had been found in her vagina and on her thighs. Coupled with the extensive bruising on her inner thighs, everything pointed to rape, not consentual sex.

He started to set the report aside but paused, something registering that had not struck him before. He flipped back to the lung analysis. Potassium monopersulfate. What the hell was that?

He pulled his notebook closer and made a note to call Vince Carissimi, the medical examiner, in the morning.

The low rumble of thunder pulled Louis’s attention to the window. A cool breeze, smelling of rain, wafted in through the jalousies. He glanced up at the wet stain in the ceiling above his bed. It had rained almost every night in the last week and he knew he was living on borrowed time before the whole damn roof gave way.

He set the autopsy report aside and scanned the bed, looking for the police report. Issy was sleeping on it. He tried to ease it out from under her.

“Off, cat,” he said.

With a quick move, he jerked it out. The cat didn’t even look up at him.

He opened the folder. He was looking for the lead investigator on the case and finally zeroed in on a Detective Robert Ahnert. His signature appeared on all the reports. Ahnert’s own accounts, including his initial call to the dumpsite, were written in a concise, unemotional style. Even his report of going to the Jagger home to deliver the news that Kitty’s body had been found was handled in the same detached manner.

Louis started to gather it all up but then paused. Something in his memory was nagging him. He went to his dresser and got the file that held the newspaper clips about Kitty’s murder. He found the interview with her father, Willard Jagger.

Damn. There it was. Willard Jagger said he had reported his daughter missing on April 9th. Two days before her body was discovered in the dump.

So where was the missing person’s report? He knew that cops usually let twenty-four or even forty-eight hours go by before they acted on a missing person’s report. But this wasn’t a big city where teenagers normally went missing. This was a small town where the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl would probably send up a red flag. Why hadn’t Ahnert acted when Willard Jagger reported his daughter missing?

Bernhardt and Candace Duvall would have to wait, no matter what Susan thought. He needed to talk to Ahnert. If the guy was still alive.

Louis leafed through the rest of the material, but there was nothing unusual. It was all there, complete, professional-and as impersonal as the wound chart.

Kitty Jagger. . reduced to the ultimate generic.

It had started to rain. He could hear it beating on the roof. A moment later, he felt a splatter on his head and his eyes darted up.

“Shit,” he muttered.

The stain was starting to drip. Louis jumped up and dragged the bed a foot to the left. He went to the kitchen and returned with a pot, setting it under the drip. Issy had retreated to a mound of dirty clothes on the floor.

Louis stared at the mess of papers and folders on his bed. The blowup copy of the black and white yearbook picture of Kitty Jagger was lying on top.

He hadn’t noticed it the first time, but he realized now that she looked vaguely like a girl who used to babysit him. Amy. . that was her name. She lived three doors down from the Lawrence house and she used to bring a little blue case of 45s with her. He remembered she came over one night with a burn mark on her forehead from ironing her hair. All the white girls had wanted stick-straight hair in those days, like the Beatles’ girlfriends.

Amy was fifteen. He was ten. She taught him to do the Boogaloo. She called him “little soul brother.”

He paused, then went to his bureau. He opened a drawer, pulling the worn envelope out from under his underwear.

He sifted slowly through the pictures, pausing at the portrait of his sister Yolanda. Hand on hip, cocky tilt to her head, flirtatious smile. He wished he could remember her that way. Not the way she had looked the last time he saw her. She had been standing on the porch, screaming, crying, as the social services woman put him in the big green car.

His sister. . he could still remember her touch when she washed him, her voice when she rocked him to sleep. His sister had been there for him.

Louis picked up another faded photo. It was of his mother Lila, the one taken when she was eighteen and still beautiful. Where had she been that day? He remembered she was sleeping. Or had she been passed out?

He picked up the faded snapshot of the white man in the straw hat.

And where were you, you sonofabitch?

Louis lifted his eyes to his reflection in the dresser mirror.

I don’t even know what you really look like. Or if I have any part of you in my face.

Louis dropped the photo to the dresser and turned away from the mirror. He rubbed his face and glanced at his watch. It was after midnight and he needed some sleep.

He moved back to the bed and started to gather up the files. Finally, he gave up and just shoved them aside, crawling up against the pillows and leaning his head back against the headboard.

The rain was beating a steady rhythm on the roof, and he tried to relax, but there was too much junk swimming in his head. Too many pictures of girls’ bruised faces and shadowy men in straw hats.

He heard a noise and sat up.

The creak of his screen door. He moved quickly off the bed, to the bedroom door and peered out into the dark living room. There was someone there.

Louis reached around the doorjamb and flipped on the light.

Jack Cade squinted at him, his black hair matted to his head, rain streaking his face.

“What the fuck?” Louis said. “What are you doing here?”

Cade brushed his hair off his forehead. “Ronnie sold some land. I got bail.”

“I don’t care. Get the fuck out.”

Cade slowly peeled off his windbreaker, water puddling at his feet.

Louis took a step toward him. “Hey, man, I said get out.”

Cade eyed Louis through thick-lidded slits. He tossed the sodden jacket on a chair.

“When I’m ready.”

Louis grabbed the jacket, opened the screen door and tossed it to the porch.

“Leave,” he said, holding open the door.

“You’re starting to annoy me, Louie.”

“Look, you don’t just walk in someone’s house in the middle of the damn night.”

“You afraid of me?”

“Fuck no.”

“Good. We need to talk.”

“Not here. You want to talk, call me at Susan Outlaw’s office.”

Cade didn’t move. Louis stared at him, debating whether he should try to throw him out. But Cade probably had at least twenty pounds on him.

“I’m dripping on your floor here, Louie,” Cade said. His eyes were traveling around the small living room, finally focusing on the bedroom door. He moved quickly to it.

“Hey!” Louis yelled. He followed Cade, letting the screen door slam.