Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“Here’s what I found on Joanie Sutherland. She’s been in the system since she was thirteen. She specialized in the P s.”

“Possession and prostitution,” Alex said.

“You got it. She’s been in the county lockup half a dozen times but never gone away.”

“If she was a prostitute, that could help us on the rape charge. The coroner says he found genital trauma and Jared says their sex was consensual. So maybe Joanie had rough sex with one of her other johns earlier that evening. You think you can talk to some of the women who work Independence Avenue, maybe get a line on any of her johns?”

“My church is doing outreach to those girls. I’ll find out who to talk to.”

“Grace, you are too good for words. I don’t know another investigator who could turn her church into a source. What else did you find out about Joanie?”

“She was twenty-eight years old. Been to rehab a couple of times. Grew up in Northeast.”

“Where was she living?”

“She spent a lot of time on the street, but she stayed some with her sister, Bethany, in a mobile home park just off of Blue Ridge.”

“Where’s that?”

Grace opened the file and pointed to the address. “Pull it up on Google Maps.”

Alex punched in the address, hunching her shoulders and leaning toward the monitor as she zoomed in and out.

“How about that?”

“How about what?” Grace asked.

“The mobile home park is a little east from where her body was found, maybe a couple of miles,” she said, pointing to the map.

“So you’re thinking Joanie was familiar with the area?”

“Makes sense. I don’t think she met Jared on Match.com.” She scooted her chair away from the monitor. “What do we know about the sister?”

Grace turned to another page in the file. “Here’s a copy of her driver’s license. She’s had a couple of speeding tickets but nothing more than that. She works at the Clay County courthouse.”

“North of the river, huh. What’s she do up there?”

“Cleans.”

Alex picked up the copy of the driver’s license, studying the photograph. “This is a lousy picture, and the photocopy makes it worse, but. .”

“But what?”

“I may have run into her last Friday,” she said, telling Grace about the little girl in the creek and the woman driving the Impala.

“Well, now we’ve got an address, we can find out for sure. You want me to go see her?”

“No, I’ll go, but I want to talk to Jared first. It’s time he filled in some blanks for me.”

“How’s the neck?”

They were back in the same closet-sized room, the air sour from the day’s earlier meetings. It was warm enough that she took off her jacket. She wished she’d chosen short sleeves with her khaki pants instead of a sweater.

The more violent her client’s offense, the more claustrophobic the room felt. But Jared was too mellow to trigger that vibe, as he fingered the bandage on his neck.

“Okay, I guess. First time I’ve ever been stabbed.”

Alex’s hand went to her neck, a sympathetic reaction, her fingers tugging at her flesh.

“Tell me what happened.”

He furrowed his brow. “Didn’t nobody tell you?”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“This old dude, he come up from behind and jumped me for no reason. I threw him off of me and the guards hauled him away. That’s all I know.”

“Did you find out who he was?”

“Somebody said his name was Wood or Woody, something like that.”

“His name was Mathew Woodrell. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Jared’s eyes fluttered for an instant as he made a fist and pressed it hard against his mouth.

“I knew a Woodrell in the army, but it wasn’t him,” he said, his fist muffling his answer.

“No. It wasn’t him. It was his daughter, McCallister.”

He ground his fist against his teeth, his face flushing; then he pulled his fist away, his knuckles gouged and red.

“Yeah, I knew her,” he said, his voice thickening.

Alex knew she was on fragile ground. She kept her tone soft and easy.

“Everyone called her Ali.”

He nodded.

“One of the COs told me that sometimes you wake up during the night calling her name. Why is that?”

He pressed his fingers against his eyes, dragging his hands across his cheeks. He ducked his chin and turned his head from side to side, moving his lips like he was having an argument with himself about what to say. Then he sniffed, wiped his moist eyes with the backs of his hands, and shook his head again, finally squaring up and looking straight at Alex.

“’Cause I killed her. That’s why her father jumped me, isn’t it?”

Alex sucked in a breath. She knew how hard it was to admit to such a thing.

“That’s what he says. Tell me what happened, Jared.”

He raised his head to the ceiling, one hand covering his eyes, breathing deeply before coming back to her, his face pinched.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. Things sometimes get out of hand.”

“Ali was so pretty and so kind. All I wanted was to be around her, even if she never give me the time of day.”

“How did that make you feel?” Alex asked.

He sighed. “Like I was nothing, like I didn’t deserve her, but I knew I did. I was as good as she was. I kept telling her if she’d just give me a chance, we could be real good together.”

“And what did she say about that?”

He clenched his eyes, ticktocking his head back and forth.

“She said, ‘Not in my lifetime, soldier.’ That’s what she called me, soldier, even though I wore a name tag like every other grunt.”

“Did that make you angry?”

“A little bit, I suppose, but I couldn’t stay mad at her, not the way I felt about her. I just told myself, Jared, you stick with it, give her a reason, and she’ll come around.”

“How did Ali feel about all the attention you paid her?”

He shrugged, eyes down. “I dunno.”

“Did she complain to her superiors that you were harassing her?”

He pressed his palms against his thighs, straightening his back.

“I wasn’t harassing her. I just wanted to, you know, talk to her, be friends. That was all.”

“You must have been angry, then. Is that why you killed her?”

“I was scared, but I wasn’t angry,” Jared said.

“What were you scared of?”

“Getting caught.”

“For killing Ali?”

He shook his head. “No. I was scared of us getting caught by the Taliban.”

Alex squinted at him, trying to make sense of what Jared was saying. “I’m not following you.”

He wiped his face with his sleeve and took a breath. “All that time I was trying to get her to like me and getting nowhere; then one day out of the blue, we get assigned to the same detail and we’re riding in a jeep together, in the middle of a three-vehicle convoy, trucks carrying supplies in front and behind. Anyway, we’re in this little convoy and the truck in front of us hits an IED, gets blown all to hell. Then the truck behind us takes fire and it runs off the road. Next thing I know, we’re surrounded and they dragged me and Ali out of the jeep. I coulda swore they got rid of the others just to capture us.”

“Why would they do that? Why not kill you guys too?”

“Oh, they were going to kill us all right, but not till after they were done with Ali.”

Alex nodded. “Then what happened?”

“Well, I was right, ’cause one of them towelheads put a gun on me while the others held Ali down and. .” He choked on the words, unable to get them out.

“Raped her.”

He bobbed his head up and down, his voice breaking. “Then they hauled her up to her knees and that was the first and only time she called me by my name. ‘Jared,’ she said, ‘help me.’ But all I did was stand there and watch one of those fucking haji shoot her in the head. They’d have shot me next except an Apache helicopter found us and opened up on them. I hit the dirt and they run off.” He dropped his head, crying. “God, I wish they’d killed me too.”