P. Parrish - Thicker Than Water

“Haven’t got time.” Louis started toward the door.

“Louis?”

He turned back.

“I wasn’t getting on you, about Cade I mean,” Vince said. “In my line of work, you come to think everybody gets their due eventually. I forget sometimes you guys can’t wait for that. I’ll call as soon as I get that report.”

Louis nodded.

“Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,” Vince said. “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.”

Louis pulled up to Susan’s house and cut the engine. He sat for a moment in the dark, thinking about his wasted day.

It had started out promising enough. After Vince had told him about the semen sample, he had spent the morning trying to track down Kitty’s friend Joyce. There was no one listed in the Immokalee phone book under Novack, but there was a Stan Novick. Louis got an answering machine with a woman’s voice but didn’t leave a message. He had been about to drive out to Immokalee when Susan beeped him.

“I ran the Toyota’s plate,” she said when he called her office. “It came back to Harold Lieberman of Dade County.”

He had stayed silent, thinking about losing the whole day driving to Miami.

“There’s six Liebermans in the directory. You need to call them,” Susan said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m in court all day. You got a pen?”

So Louis had called five Harold Liebermans in Dade County, looking for someone who fit the description of the woman he had seen on Candace’s patio. He hit on the sixth call. A woman answered and told him yes, she had a daughter named Hayley and Hayley had wrecked her own car and was using her father’s Toyota, and if he saw her, tell her to bring it back because Harry was going to be pissed off when he got out of Mt. Sinai and found out it was gone. The woman said she didn’t know where her daughter was living, and Louis had the feeling she didn’t want to.

A breeze wafted in from his open window. Louis leaned forward and glanced out the windshield. The clouds were moving over the moon. It smelled like more rain was coming.

He leaned back against the headrest, looking at Susan’s dark windows. She wasn’t going to be happy about the Lieberman dead end, and he had been thinking all day that he wasn’t earning his pay and they should part ways. For her sake-and for his.

He shifted, reaching in his jeans pocket. He pulled out the picture, holding it so he could see it in the streetlight.

Kitty Jagger smiled back at him.

She would be thirty-five now. Maybe she would have found her rich knight and he would have whisked her off to a pink palace in Palm Beach. Maybe she would have found a way to get to college or be a model. Or maybe she would have just married a nice guy, had a couple blond kids and lived in a house over in Cape Coral, driving over on the weekends to take care of Dad’s flowers and bring him apple juice.

The smell of something sweet came in the car window, carried by the breeze. Louis looked up, almost expecting to see someone. Just darkness. He rubbed his hand over his face. He put the picture away and got out of the car.

The sweet smell followed him as he went up the walk. He knocked on the front door. When he heard nothing, he peered in the small diamond-shaped window on the door. The living room was dark. He looked at his watch. It was only nine. Who went to bed at nine?

The heady perfume was swirling around him. A porch light went on. That’s when he saw the big plant by the door, its delicate white flowers swaying in the wind.

Shit. It was just Night Blooming Jasmine.

The deadbolt clicked open and then the door. He smiled. Susan didn’t.

“You were supposed to call me,” she said, walking away. She was barefoot and wrapped in a fuzzy white robe. Her hair was pulled to the top of her head, spraying out like a small fountain.

Louis could hear soft music coming from the back of the house. Elegant. Classical. Handel’s Water Music. Frances used to play it sometimes to make him sleep. It used to make him think of palaces and chandeliers. Susan faced him, her face scrubbed clean of make-up. She looked different; fresh, younger. . cuddly. Like a polar bear cub.

His eyes went to the hallway. He could see the dim flicker of candlelight on the walls. Oh man, he was interrupting something.

Say something.

“You weren’t asleep, were you?” he said.

“No.” Susan turned, walking into the kitchen, returning with a glass of wine. “So did you track down the Lieberman thing?”

“Yes.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Hayley.”

Susan waited.

“That’s all I found out.”

“No address?”

“Not yet.” The last word came out too close to an apology.

Susan gave him a long look. He was trying to figure out how to bring up the idea that he wanted to quit the case when Susan spoke again.

“So what else did you do today?” she asked evenly.

He hesitated. “I went to see Vince Carissimi.”

“The M.E.? Why?”

“I wanted him to take a look at Kitty Jagger’s autopsy report. There was a second semen sample.”

“A what?”

“A second semen sample taken from Kitty, other than the one on the panties.”

“What panties?”

Louis forgot she had not reviewed Kitty Jagger’s case. He knew she didn’t want to hear about this, but he needed to tell someone.

“The biggest piece of evidence against Cade was the semen on Kitty’s panties that the cops found in Cade’s truck,” he said. He could hear the eagerness creep into his voice, an eagerness he wanted her to share.

“It was blood type O,” he went on. “There was also semen inside her. The sample was probably tested, but there is no report on the results.”

Susan was standing there, hand on hip, staring at him. He knew what was coming.

“And what does this have to do with Spencer Duvall?” she said.

“The report is missing, Susan,” he said. “What if it was taken out of the police files for a reason? What if it turns out to not be O positive, what if-”

“Kincaid. .” she said.

“Susan, listen,” he said. “I got a lead today on Kitty’s girlfriend and-”

“Kitty’s girlfriend?”

“She’s living in Immokalee and I think if I talk to her about Kitty-”

“Kincaid, stop,” she said more firmly.

He looked at her. She was shaking her head, her eyes tired. She dropped down on the sofa, holding the wine glass between her hands, head bowed.

“Susan,” he began, “I know I promised to-”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “We made a bargain, remember? You told me you’d find me something, but you’re running around chasing some damn ghost.”

He just stared at her.

She set the wine glass aside. “You have got to get off this Jagger thing.”

“It’s important to the case,” Louis said.

“No, it’s important to you, Kincaid.” She shook her head. “I can hear it, I can hear it in your voice when you say her name now.”

“That’s nuts, Susan.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “I’m going to say this one more time, okay? You are trying to keep Jack Cade out of the electric chair. You are not trying to solve that girl’s murder.”

It was time to tell her he wanted out. But then he took a good look at her face. He knew she had been in court all day, but she had never looked this beaten down before. He sat down in a chair across from her.

“What happened today?” he asked.

She rubbed her temples. “I lost all three of my motions.”

She began to gather up a bunch of drawings and colored markers, putting them back in their case. She looked up. Louis followed her gaze.