Cold Woods Page 26

  “Stay back,” Parker shouted to the driver. Then he leaped onto the porch, stopped by the front door across from Geena. He listened. He didn’t hear any noise coming from inside the house. He peered between the curtains of the living room window. The sound of his own blood pumping through his veins filled his ears. Two bodies lay on the floor.

  “Two down,” Parker said. “I don’t see any movement.”

  Linda Walsh was walking toward them.

  “You need to go back inside your house,” Geena said. “Now.”

  Linda nodded, retreated down the snow-covered sidewalk, stopped as far as her porch.

  “Trisha,” Parker hollered. “It’s Detective Reed.” He waited for a response, but none came. He pushed open the door, gun raised. He took one step into the room, smelled the sharp tanginess of blood. The scent of death settled in his mouth and in the back of his throat. Geena came to stand next to him.

  Sid Whitehouse lay in the middle of the living room floor, blood pooling around his head. Parker didn’t have to check to know that Sid was dead. Trisha was crumpled on the floor near his feet. She wasn’t moving. She could be alive. Parker couldn’t get a good look at her injuries from where he stood. A small gun was in her hand. A suitcase was shoved against the couch, the contents spilled out. A torn couch cushion had been overturned.

  Trisha moaned.

  He aimed his gun at her. “Drop your weapon,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  Parker stepped around Trisha, tried his best to avoid the blood and contaminating the scene. He kicked the gun from her hand. The second he did it, he could hear Sayres’s voice screaming inside his head, Whatever you do, don’t touch the gun! It was hard enough to lift fingerprints, DNA, from the metal, and then Parker had gone ahead and knocked it clear across the floor. Trisha didn’t move. He bent over her, got a better look at her. Her face was smeared with blood. Her nose was off center, her skin the color of ash. He squatted next to her, found her pulse. It was weak.

  “Hang on, Trisha,” he said. “Help is coming.” He looked up at Geena. She was on her phone, calling it in, requesting an ambulance. Linda stood in the doorway.

  “Get out,” he said to Linda.

  “I’m a retired registered nurse. Can I help?”

  “No,” he said and stood, took her by the arm, and led her outside.

  Linda pulled her arm away. “That’s my best friend’s daughter in there, and if there’s anything I can do to help her, I’m going to.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you inside.” Not with a gun lying on the floor.

  “Is she alive?” she asked. “Just tell me if she’s alive.”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask that you take a seat.” He directed her to the curb.

  Sirens cut through the air, getting louder and louder the closer they got to Second Street. Within minutes a team of cruisers had pulled up, lights flashing. A couple of local police officers blocked off the street, stopping traffic from coming through. They held off the neighbors who had stepped outside to see what was going on.

  Parker hadn’t moved from the porch. Geena was inside. He should go back in, help her process the scene. Officer Best approached him.

  “What happened?” Scott asked. “Is it Trisha? Is she okay?”

  “She’s alive,” Parker said. “An ambulance is on the way. That’s all I can say at this time.”

  Parker stood on the porch a little longer, pulled himself together as he watched the snow pile onto the cars, the street, the walkway. He took a few more seconds to gather himself, wiped the sweat from his palms. He had to go back in the house. His partner was in there. He told himself he just wouldn’t look at the pieces of brain and bone fragments on the floor from Sid’s skull. Then he took a deep breath and went inside. Geena squatted next to Trisha.

  “Can you hear me, Trisha?” Geena asked. Trisha didn’t respond.

  The ambulance arrived. The EMTs worked on Trisha, stabilized her, lifted her onto the stretcher, carried her out. Linda Walsh got into her car and followed the ambulance.

  It wasn’t until after Trisha had gone that the forensic unit took over the living room. Parker had been avoiding looking at Sid’s body the entire time until Nathan, the county coroner, called him over.

  “Single gunshot wound to the head, close range,” Nathan said and pointed to an area on the skin near the temple. “You can tell it was close range by the burn marks from the gunpowder.”

  All Parker could do at this point was nod. He didn’t trust himself to speak, not with so much saliva collecting on the back of his tongue. When he’d gotten what he needed from Nathan, he found his voice, thanked him, and stepped outside. He’d get the rest from the autopsy report. He leaned against the side of the house, shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from getting cold. Geena was writing down information on Sid Whitehouse from the driver of the black sedan. A crowd had gathered—neighbors, law enforcement, emergency personnel—all cluttering the street.

  When Geena finished with the driver, she leaned against the side of the house next to Parker. Snow caught in her hair and eyelashes.

  “You okay?” she asked. “That’s about as fresh as a body gets.”

  “I’m fine,” he said: not an outright lie but not the truth either. For the first time since he’d been promoted to homicide, he wondered if he could cut it. “Why did you become a detective?” he asked.

  “The short version. One day I was writing speeding tickets; the next day I was being promoted. It seems I have a unique skill that someone in command deemed useful.”

  “What’s the skill?” he asked.

  “I have an eidetic memory, or some call it a photographic memory. I study a scene, a face, information in a file, and it becomes snapshots in my head. I’m a useful pet to have around if you need to recall something pretty quickly.”

  He remembered the way she’d examined the crime scene when they were in the mountains, how she’d only ever read the missing person file once and never checked her notes after interviewing witnesses. “What’s the long version?”

  She shrugged. “What about you? Why homicide?”

  “I wanted to get the bad guys off the streets.”

  “Deep,” she said, nudged him in the arm. “What’s your take on this?” she asked, motioning to Trisha’s house, the same house they leaned on.

  “There’s no doubt she’s the shooter,” Parker said. “But by the looks of her, I’m not sure she had a choice.” He didn’t feel good about being right that Trisha’s husband had abused her. There was nothing good or right about it.

  “Appears to be a case of self-defense,” Geena said. Then she added, “Like mother, like daughter.”

  The snow had stopped but not before dumping another four inches on the town. The roadways were slippery, even though the plows had done their best to clear them. It was evening. Dusk had long gone, taking the gray haze of winter with it, knocking out any chance of remaining daylight.

  Parker pulled into the driveway of Becca’s late father’s house. The floodlights were on. She was outside shoveling the walkway that led to the front door. She stopped shoveling when Parker got out of the car. He walked up to her, wanted to wrap his arms around her. Romy jumped around his feet. Becca gazed up at him. He never wanted to stop looking into those careful gray eyes.

  “Bad day?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He got another shovel from the garage. He rejoined her in front of the house. They finished clearing the walkway in silence, then went inside, sat across from each other at the kitchen table, mugs of hot chocolate in front of them. Romy lay on the floor at their feet.

  “My dad never talked about the job,” Becca said. Her father had been the chief of police of Portland before he’d passed.

  “Becca.”

  She held up her hand. “Please, let me finish,” she said. “He never talked about any of it: the things he’d seen, how it affected him, ma
de him feel. I used to think that if he would’ve just opened up about it with my mom, things would’ve been better between them. He wouldn’t have done some of the things that he did. They wouldn’t have divorced. They would’ve stayed married.”

  “We’re not your parents,” he said.

  “I know that,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t have the same problems.”

  He took a moment to think about what she said, couldn’t come up with anything to prove she was wrong. Then he opened his mouth to tell her about the bad dreams he was having, how he couldn’t sleep, but the words wouldn’t come, fell away before they ever reached his lips.

  “I know you, Parker. I know you better than you know yourself sometimes.” Her lips turned up at the corners for a brief moment before falling to a straight line.

  He was tired suddenly. He had a pile of paperwork waiting for him at the station: evidence to sift through on Sid Whitehouse’s death. He didn’t want to talk about his job and the problems that had somehow sprung up between them like weeds. They would have to talk about it eventually if they were ever going to get past it. But right now, all he wanted was to be with her, feel her next to him, hold her close.

  “I’m sorry I had to cancel our dinner date tonight,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she said and crossed her arms. It didn’t look to Parker like it was okay at all.

  “Do you just want me to go?” he asked.

  “No.” She reached across the table, squeezed his hand. “I want you to stay.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Trisha opened her right eye. The left eye was swollen shut. She reached up to touch her throbbing head. Wires hung from her arm where the IV was dripping medicine into her vein. Pain medicine, she hoped. Her chest ached with every breath. Tubes were shoved up her nose.

  Linda appeared by her side. “The doctor will be in to talk with you soon.” She gently squeezed Trisha’s hand. Carlyn and Dannie emerged, flanking Linda.

  “How bad is it?” Trisha asked.

  “You have a concussion,” Linda said.

  “That explains my pounding head. What about my ribs?” She winced. Talking wasn’t easy. It made her side so much more painful.

  “You have two fractured ribs. A punctured lung.”

  “Ah, well, that explains why it hurts to breathe.” Her mouth was dry. Her throat hoarse. She tried to swallow, but she didn’t have any spit.

  “You were lucky,” Linda said.

  “Lucky.” Trisha smiled, but even smiling hurt.

  “It could’ve been worse,” Linda said.

  Trisha reached up, touched the tubes going into her nostrils, wondered if her nose was still pushed onto her cheek.

  “It’s back in the center of your face where it belongs,” Carlyn said, touched Trisha’s brow.

  Trisha tried to assess where the pain was radiating from the most. Was it her head? Her ribs? Her throat? Maybe it was her heart. “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Carlyn said.

  Dannie leaned over the bed rail, her expression full of concern, worry. A rosary dangled from her fingers.

  Trisha turned her head away; the slightest movement felt like a jackhammer was pounding against her brain. But she couldn’t look at her friends, Carlyn’s mother. She’d spent her entire adult life with Sid, and that small sick part of her grieved, and yet a bigger part of her felt relieved. He could never hurt her again.

  The door to the hospital room swung open. Detective Reed stepped inside.

  Linda patted Trisha’s hand. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.” Carlyn and Linda both nodded at the detective on their way out.

  Dannie lingered. “I need to get home to my girls,” she said to Trisha. “But I’ll check in on you later, okay?”

  Once her friends had gone and Trisha was alone, Detective Reed approached, stood alongside the bed. He put his hands in his pants pockets.

  “Does my mother know?” she asked.

  “If she doesn’t know yet, I’m sure she’ll hear about it soon. Prisons are a good source of information if you know who to talk to. But if you’d like, I can relay a message to her.”

  “Tell her I’m okay.”

  “That’s all you want to say, that you’re okay?”

  “That’s it.” It was best neither she nor her mother said too much from here on out, given their current situations. “Thank you,” she said, realizing he had offered to do her a favor.

  “You’re welcome.” He was talking in a kind voice, the one he probably used with friends and family when he wasn’t being a cop. “I put a guard outside your door.” His tone changed, back to business. “It will be up to the DA whether or not he wants to press charges. My partner is with him now.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “What happened between you and your husband?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t you read me my rights before you start asking me questions, Detective?”

  “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious what happened.” She scratched her wrist. It was time for a drink. Funny how her body could be broken, but still she craved the one thing that could potentially kill her.

  “Maybe it is obvious; maybe it isn’t,” he said. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “He choked me.” Her fingers touched the skin on her neck. It was sore. “He was going to kill me.”

  The detective gently took her hand and moved it away from her throat. “You have bruises,” he said.

  The air in the room thickened, or did it just seem that way? She struggled to inhale. She coughed, which felt like an explosion inside her chest. A nurse breezed in; the detective stepped back. The nurse, Kelly, her name written on the whiteboard hanging on the opposite wall, gave the detective a dirty look. She smiled at Trisha, a conspiratorial wink.

  Let the detective play his games, Trisha thought. What woman would convict her for killing her husband after what he’d done to her? The detective didn’t know the half of it. Or maybe he did. Maybe he understood why Trisha had done it. Maybe he’d seen it before.

  Kelly checked the machine next to the bed, the one that had beeped and buzzed nonstop since Trisha had opened her one good eye. “Here.” She handed Trisha a kind of remote. “If you need anything, you press this button.” She glanced at the detective. “The doctor should be in shortly. He’s making rounds now.”

  Once Kelly left the room, Detective Reed placed his forearms on the bed rail, bent toward Trisha. He lowered his voice. “I have one more question for you.”

  The pain in her head, chest, intensified.

  “Why did you pack?” he asked. “Were you really planning on going back to Vegas with him?”

  She knew this question would be coming. He was trying to establish motive, her frame of mind, whether or not it was premeditated. “I guess I was hoping he would change. Isn’t that what all battered wives wish for, that their husbands will keep their promise and never hit them again?”

  “If that’s true, then why did you buy the gun?”

  “In case he didn’t keep his promise.”

  He seemed to consider her explanation, as though he were trying to decide whether he believed her. “Okay,” he said finally.

  He left after that, and she was alone. And in spite of the pain in her head, the pressure in her chest, the tubes up her nose and running from her arm, she felt weightless, light, but most of all, she felt free.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  DECEMBER 4, 1986

  When Dannie came home after school, she found her mother lying on the couch, as usual. A soap opera blared from the TV. One glance and Dannie knew it was General Hospital, her mother’s favorite daytime drama. Although she often complained that it wasn’t the same since Luke and Laura had left the show.

  Whatever. Dannie turned off the TV.

  “Hey,” her mother said.

  “Get up,” Dannie said. She was sick of it—disgusted by her mother’s lack o
f, well, mothering. “Get a job!” she hollered.

  Her mother stared at her, tried to pull herself up, but she was too fat to do it herself. Dannie dropped her books, sighing heavily, and reached underneath the rolls of her mother’s arms, pulled her up.

  “Did you have a bad day at school?” her mother asked.

  “No,” she said. It wasn’t a bad day that had set her on edge. Lately, her friends had been shutting her out. Carlyn would steal glances at Trisha. Trisha would wink back, as though they were in on some private joke that no one else was meant to know about. But why couldn’t Dannie be in on it too? Why were they excluding her? And where was Trisha today, anyway? Why had she skipped school? Dannie knew darn well Trisha had slept at Carlyn’s last night. They hadn’t included her in their little slumber party either.

  Dannie grabbed a pound of ground beef from the refrigerator. She made Hamburger Helper for the third night in a row. She didn’t have to look at the instructions on the package. She could cook it in her sleep. When it was done, she carried a big plate of it on a tray, set it across her mother’s stomach.

  “I’m going out,” she said and left before her mother could ask her where she was going.

  She marched across the street, hurried past Trisha’s house on her way to Carlyn’s. Dannie had stopped knocking on Trisha’s door weeks ago, too scared Lester would answer. Instead, she knocked on Carlyn’s front door before walking in. “Hello?” she called.

  The inside of the house was quiet. Mrs. Walsh must either be sleeping or at work. Dannie tiptoed up the stairs, stopped outside Carlyn’s bedroom. Her friends weren’t there. Her shoulders slumped. Where had they gone? Why hadn’t she been invited again?

  On the floor next to Carlyn’s bed, Dannie spied Trisha’s softball bat: the one she’d stolen from gym class and kept in her bedroom for reasons she hadn’t come out and said, but everyone knew why anyway.

  But what was the bat doing here?