P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“Saturday?” she asked.

“Okay. Here?”

Lily looked up at Channing.

“How about you take Lily to lunch Saturday?” Channing said. “I have to work. You know, on patrol.”

Channing was offering alone time but also letting Louis know he wouldn’t be too far away, sitting in his cruiser.

“I’d like that,” Louis said.

Lily wet her lips and for a moment seemed a little lost about what she was supposed to do now.

“Goodbye,” she said softly. “It was nice meeting you, Louis.”

Thirty-six years old, and here he was, committing his first crime. Well, not his first, exactly. His first was planting his ex-wife’s bra in the trunk of Jean’s car and asking a decent man to file a false report. But since nothing had come of that, it wasn’t really a crime in his mind.

This would be a crime, Shockey knew. The minute that green Gremlin pulled away and he went inside a house that was not his, he would be a criminal, a trespasser at the very least, a felon if he took anything.

Jake Shockey unwrapped a piece of Dentyne and stuck it in his mouth. He was sitting in his car, an ’85 AMC Eagle partially covered in gray primer. It was one of the few things he’d walked away with after his divorce. He hadn’t minded giving the rest to his ex-wife, Anita: the twenty-seven-inch TV, the new bedroom suite, the canoe he’d wanted so badly for those fishing trips on the Au Sable River he had never gotten around to taking.

And the two kids, Brian and Ellie.

None of it had really been his, anyway.

You had to love something or someone to make it yours, and all of those things had been only temporary replacements, things he tried to use to fill the emptiness of something else. And when they were gone, it hadn’t mattered much to him.

But when Jean was gone…

When he’d made the decision to come out to the farm that morning, he told himself he had nothing to lose anymore. The final replacement “thing” he had — his job — was gone now, too. And it was funny what people thought about and what they were capable of when there were no more rules and they had nothing to lose anymore.

He heard the rattle of a small car’s engine, and he slipped quickly from the wagon and crept to the wall of brush that camouflaged it. Brandt and Margi were leaving the house. They were far away, and he couldn’t see Margi’s face, but he could tell she was limping. He wondered if — no, he didn’t wonder, he knew — Brandt had hurt her.

He watched the Gremlin leave, climbed back into his wagon, and made the quarter-mile drive to the farm. Brandt had left the gate ajar, and Shockey drove around back to park, remembering that Kincaid had told him the only way into the house was through the cellar doors.

In less than a minute, he was in the kitchen.

Something bad happened here…

That’s what the girl had said. And Shockey was sure he knew what it was. If Jean had been killed in this house, it was here in this god-awful kitchen.

But where to start?

He stood in the center of the kitchen and took a long look around. No appliances, scuffed blue linoleum, dark scarred wood paneling halfway up the walls, then faded yellow paper spotted with black mold. One wall of built-in cupboards in the same dark wood, the doors flung open to empty shelves.

The cupboard.

Kincaid had said the girl had been hiding in there when he found her. Maybe that’s where she had been that night, too. Shockey knelt by the cupboard and opened it wider. He grabbed his flashlight from his rear pocket and shined it over the inside.

Nothing but cobwebs and scratches. Maybe made by the sliding of pots and pans or maybe by the kid. No blood he could see, but then again, if the door had been closed during the murder, there would be no blood inside.

He had seen plenty of domestic homicides, and it was his experience that when the abuser was someone like Brandt, the scene was almost always bloody and violent, the result of a beating or a stabbing. It would not have been what the cops called a clean murder, a smothering or a strangling done quietly in a bedroom.

Shockey closed the door and carefully examined the outside. When he could see nothing, he drew his pocketknife from his pants and opened it. Slowly, he scraped at the stains and grime stuck in the grooves of the old wood cupboard.

Small dark bits fell to the linoleum. He wet his finger and pressed it to a flake, bringing it to his nose. It had no odor. But he pulled a small envelope from his shirt and put some of the scrapings inside. He labeled it cupboard door and sealed it.

Still on his knees, he crawled across the blue linoleum. There were many holes and tears, and he shined his flashlight at each one, hoping to see something that resembled blood, but all he saw was black grime. He scraped some up, filling three more envelopes.

It occurred to him that he no longer had access to a lab or the authority to request an analysis of anything. But hell, if he had to, he’d find an independent lab and pay for it himself. Or get the peeper’s girlfriend to do it for him.

He sat back on his heels and looked around.

This place was so filthy that any of the stains and dirt could contain blood and he’d never see it. He should have pilfered some Luminol and a lamp from station supply. But using Luminol to bring out bloodstains required total darkness, and there was probably no way he could get in here at night. It looked as if Brandt had set up permanent housekeeping.

Shockey eyed the blue linoleum.

There were enough gaps and holes in it that if Jean had bled much at all, there was a good chance some of it had soaked into the floorboards below.

He shut his eyes for a moment. It was a horrible image and he wondered how he could even conjure it up to sit in his head beside his memories of her face.

That lovely, innocent face that never asked him any questions and never demanded anything from him. Never made him feel like the heel he was for leaving her in that shitty motel on Washtenaw and going home to the three-bedroom ranch in time to kiss his wife good night.

Stop it, you asshole. Stop it. This is how you fix it. This is what you do now.

He wiped the blade of the pocketknife on his pants and started digging at one of the small holes. He worked the linoleum up until there was enough to grab. Then he started ripping it away from planks below.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Shockey looked up. Owen Brandt stood in the kitchen doorway. Black T-shirt, dirty jeans, three days’ growth of whiskers. He held a large knife in his hand.

Shockey reached for his gun and leveled it as he rose to his feet. “Put the knife down, Brandt.”

“It’s just a kitchen knife. It’s legal for me to have a fucking kitchen knife.”

“I said put it down.”

Brandt reluctantly dropped it to the floor. He even did Shockey the favor of kicking it away before Shockey told him to.

“You got a warrant to be doing that?” Brandt asked, tipping his head toward the torn linoleum.

“You worried?”

Brandt smiled. “Not one damn bit. But I still know you need a damn warrant to be tearing up my kitchen.”

“Get up against the counter,” Shockey said.

Brandt turned slowly and put his hands on the counter. Shockey patted him down. The fact that Brandt had walked in with a knife meant he might have another weapon, and Shockey was praying to find one on him. For a second, he even thought of planting one, but he knew he’d never get away with it, and he did not want this bastard suing the city and getting any money. Another idea crossed his mind, too. Plant drugs or a weapon in the Gremlin, and then make an anonymous phone call. But that idea was interrupted by Margi’s nasal voice.