Sandra Robbins - Dangerous Waters

THREE

Brad didn’t speak as he led Laura down the police station’s basement hallway. Within this part of the building all the evidence in the department’s cold cases sat on shelves, just waiting for someone to find the answers to these unsolved crimes. A feeling of despair washed over Laura at the thought that other families still waited for answers that might never come.

Laura followed quietly behind Brad and stared at his straight back and fists clenched at his side. Did he regret telling her she could look through the evidence in her parents’ case? When he had offered, she could hardly believe it. For years she’d wanted to see what the police had discovered during their investigation, and yet she’d feared seeing it, also.

Brad stopped at a closed door and pushed it open. He turned toward her, and a look of concern flashed across his face. “What’s the matter? You look like you’re having second thoughts.”

She swallowed back the uncertainty that washed over her and took a deep breath. It was time to deal with the past. She pushed past him into the room. “I’ll be okay.”

A long conference table with chairs on either side stretched nearly the length of the small room, but it was what sat in the center of the table that demanded her attention—a cardboard box with the words WEBBER EVIDENCE written on its side. She pressed her fist to her mouth and groaned.

This was what was left of her parents’ lives, a box containing evidence from the scene where they died. Could she really do this? Could she look through the words that investigators had written years ago? To them it had been just another crime scene, and they had probably recorded it in a cold, analytical reporting of the facts. To her, though, it was something more than that.

Maybe she’d been wrong to insist on seeing this. She closed her eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer for strength to follow through on what she had started. She owed it to her parents to get past how uncomfortable she might feel and look at it as a mission to gain punishment for whoever had committed the horrible deed.

“Laura, are you all right?” Brad’s voice brought her back to reality.

She took a deep breath and nodded. “I am. Just had a weak moment.”

His hand touched her arm. “You don’t have to do this.”

She turned to him and blinked back the tears in her eyes. “Oh, but I do. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to look at myself in the mirror again. Thank you for making it possible for me to be here.”

“Glad to do it.” He glanced down at the floor, moved around her and pulled one of the chairs out from the table. “This box contains all the reports and notes of the investigating detectives. I thought you could look through these first. Sit here, and I’ll get all the reports out for you.”

She sat down and watched as he began to pull notebooks and files from the box. “You said these are the reports and notes. Does that mean there’s more?”

He nodded. “Yes, but those boxes have the physical evidence gathered at the scene. I thought you might want to look at this before you look at those things, like pieces of recovered clothing and surviving parts of the bomb.”

She swallowed nausea at the thought of seeing a piece of the polka-dotted dress her mother had been wearing that day. “Thanks, Brad. I don’t think I want to see those things right now. Maybe later.”

With a sigh she reached out and pulled the first notebook closer and opened it. An hour later other notebooks lay about the table. Brad pulled another one from the box and held it out to her. “Here’s the one where lead Detective Matlock kept his notes.”

She took it and opened it to the first page. Her eyes grew wide, and she glanced up at Brad. “Well, he didn’t waste any time recording who he thought was behind the murders. He’s written here that from the beginning he felt that Tony Lynch hired Johnny Sherwood to plant the bomb, but he was never able to link either one of them to the crime.”

Brad nodded. “Yeah, he always thought that. Matlock’s retired now and lives in North Carolina. I talked to him when I read through this, and he still regrets not being able to pin this crime on Tony.”

Laura turned through the pages and scanned the detective’s handwriting. Most of the information recapped talks he’d had with individuals thought to be connected to the crime. She stopped when she came to the page of Johnny Sherwood’s interview. She read through it quickly and shrugged. “Johnny Sherwood’s girlfriend gave him an alibi that he was with her in New Orleans that night. She even produced credit card receipts. One for gas purchased on Johnny’s card at a service station just outside New Orleans and another for a restaurant in the French Quarter. Johnny’s signature was on both.”

“Yeah,” Brad snorted. “Detective Matlock never could find out who really used that credit card. Nobody at the gas station or the restaurant could identify who’d signed from a photo lineup. Matlock believed Sylvia had signed Johnny’s name on the receipt.”

Laura pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Those receipts appeared at a convenient time for Johnny, didn’t they?”

“That’s what the police thought. Before they could prove differently, Johnny was murdered in a parking lot of a club owned by Tony Lynch. Vince Stone was convicted of that murder and is serving a life sentence.”

“What happened to Johnny’s girlfriend?”

Brad shook his head. “I have no idea. I tried to locate her when I reviewed the file, but I came up with nothing.”

Laura flipped through the remaining pages of the notebook. “I’d like to read this more carefully, but I don’t want to detain you. Do you need to be doing something else right now?”

Brad shook his head. “No, my partners are covering for me today. I’ll stay until you’re finished. Then I’ll get the evidence back to storage.”

“Okay.”

He scooted his chair closer to hers and reached for the notebook. “I’ll follow along as you look through this. Maybe I missed something the first time. Two sets of eyes are better than one anyway.”

She smiled up at him. “Thank you for helping me with this, Brad. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he muttered and directed his attention to the first page.

An hour later they turned to the last page of the notebook. “Well, I guess that’s it. Nothing jumped out at me. How about you?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t...” He reached out and grabbed her hand before she could close the notebook. “Whoa! What do we have here?”

Laura’s eyes grew wide as Brad grabbed the edge of a strip of white paper that protruded from a pocket on the inside back cover and pulled it free. “What is it?”

“A photograph.” Brad held the picture up, and Laura leaned forward to examine it. They gazed at the image of a young couple standing next to an automobile. The man’s arm circled the woman’s waist, and her head was tipped back as she gazed at him. Her long blond hair hung down her back.

“I’ve never seen either one of them before. Who are they?” Laura asked.

Brad turned the picture over and smiled before he held it up for her to read what was written on the back. “‘Johnny Sherwood and Sylvia Warner before she married Daniel Hill.’ This is the first time I’ve seen a picture of her, and I had no idea she got married. Every time she’s mentioned in the file, her last name is Warner.” Brad pulled the photograph back and wrinkled his brow as he studied. “Sylvia,” he whispered. “Where are you now?”

“Do you think she might still be in Memphis?”

Brad shrugged. “I couldn’t find a trace of her before. But that was six months ago. Maybe I should try again.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched in a number. “Thompson, this is Brad Austin. Do you still have all that information I gave you some time back on a woman named Sylvia Warner? I need you to run that search again, but this time use the name Sylvia Hill. I just found out she got married.” He paused a moment as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. “That sounds good. Anything you can find. I’m down in evidence storage, but I’ll be back in my office in a few minutes.”