What the River Knows (15 page)

“Your wish is my command,
mi reyna.
” He would do anything to keep her, his queen, happy.

She smiled at him from the doorway. “Of course, it is.” She paused before leaving the room. “Quick as you can,
mijo
.”

He nodded, already on the way to the bathroom. “I’ll hurry, love.” Thoughts wandered through his head as the water streamed over his body. Maybe she was more excited about just going out than she was about spending time with him. The “date night” they had last week had certainly been a positive experience. But his suggestion that she and Heather had covered for each other definitely cooled her off. Finished with his shower, he turned off the water. Maybe she wanted to make him more passionate by making him wait. He toweled his body roughly, trying to hurry. That had to be it. She was teasing him like she had when he was trying to get her to go out with him, as she did when they first started dating. Whatever her motive, he thought as he pulled on his jeans, she had him throbbing with anticipation.

****

Scott sipped at the iced tea. Maybe occupying himself with drinking it would keep him from voicing the irritation that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. At the end of the table, next to Rica, sat Dr. Ambrose. At this moment, the good doctor was leaning toward Rica, telling her something in a voice so low that Scott, as close to Rica as he could get his chair, his own arm across the back of her chair, couldn’t make out any words. Rica had curved toward the doctor, watching his face while his lips nearly brushed her ear. Scott took some of the ice from his glass and crunched it, wishing instead it was his hands crunching Dr. Ambrose’s face.

Rica laughed then and leaned back against him. Her fingers stroked his face and then her hand dropped to his thigh. Ashamed of his earlier jealousy, he kissed the top of her ear. He saw her shoot a look at him, and she removed her hand and sat up straight away from him.

“Any progress on the murder?” Heather’s husband John asked from his spot across the table. John and Scott represented the sole non-medical personnel at the table. John worked as an electrician; ICU nurse Greta was married to anesthesiologist Eric; physician’s assistant Jane dated OR nurse Dan; Ellen and Sam worked in labor and delivery, while Jason was a lab tech. And then there was the delightful Dr. Ambrose, chin propped on his hand while he listened raptly to the story Heather was telling. Rica watched Dr. Ambrose instead of Heather. Maybe she had heard the story before.

“Not much progress,” Scott admitted. “We’ve interviewed a lot of witnesses and are following leads.”

“Not like it is on TV, eh, with the perp behind bars in 40 minutes.”

“Nothing like it is on TV.” Scott laughed and shook his head. “It’s mostly tedious and filled with paperwork.”

Scott’s pager beeped. Even as he reached for it, the rest of the people at the table looked for their own pagers to make sure the beeping wasn’t for them. “Call dispatch immediately,” the tiny screen said.

“Please excuse me.” He slid back his chair, noting that only John’s eyes followed him from the table. He walked to a quiet spot near the bar door before he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the station. “Aylward here. What’s up?”

Melinda’s usually pleasant voice carried a strain. “Double homicide at the Quick Shop on West Seventeenth.” She drew in a breath. “Bates is already there.”

Scott’s stomach tightened. Two people dead, and investigating this case would take them away from working on Delia’s. “I’ll be on my way in two minutes or less.” Snapping the phone shut, he turned to look at the table he had just left. No one seemed to be missing him.

Back at the table, he touched Rica’s shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. “Yes, Scott?”

“I have to go to work.” The conversation at the table paused for a moment, as if they were all waiting for gruesome details. “Do you want me to take you home first?”

“I can give you a ride home,” Heather offered, her eyes on Rica.

Rica glanced at her friend, then looked back up at Scott. “Go on to work, Scott. I’ll be fine here.”

I’ll bet you will be.
Scott saw Dr. Ambrose watching Rica. Scott bent to give her a long, sensual kiss, hoping that kiss would remind her of the promise they had made to each other before they left the apartment. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

Chapter 28

As the chief addressed the media swarming around the ambulance, Scott ducked under the yellow “Crime Scene” tape and nodded to the officer dusting the door for fingerprints.

“Bates is with the bodies.” The officer tipped his head toward the back of the store. “In the freezer.”

“Thanks.” Scott walked past another officer photographing goods dumped from the shelves to the floor. Through a grimy aluminum swinging door that only covered about two-thirds of the opening, he could hear voices. He stepped through the door, careful not to touch it. No blood on it, he noted. Just past the door stood a walk-in freezer, door ajar, Bates standing beside the door, listening to someone speak from inside the freezer.

“Hey, Scott.” Bates looked toward Scott as he approached. “Doc is trying to determine exact time of death right now.”

“Hell of a problem, Del.” The voice of Dr. Reichmuller, a local family physician who also served as the County Coroner, sounded muffled from the freezer. “Cause of death is a no-brainer, both of them shot point-blank center chest. But them being in the freezer muddles up the body temp. I’ll have to get them to the morgue for more tests.”

Scott leaned forward to survey the scene inside the freezer. Against the pizzas at the far end of the freezer, the bodies of two women, one wearing the red logo shirt of the chain, slumped on the floor. The blood that nearly matched the shirt had formed a pool around them before it froze. The expressions on their faces registered fear. It looked like the older woman had grasped the hand of the younger just before their lives ended.

“Regular customer came in about nine, found no one behind the counter and the store trashed. He backed out and called 911. Dispatch called the manager, who got here about two minutes behind the squad cars. When uniforms didn’t find anyone in the store, they had the manager come in and open the freezer.” Bates gestured toward the women. “This is what they found.”

His stomach tight from the finality of the end for these women, Scott tore his gaze away from them. “ID’s yet?”

Bates nodded, consulting his ever-present notebook. “Young one is Amy Erikson, came on duty at three, only her second shift by herself.” Bates sniffed. “Damn freezer is making the whole place cold.” He flipped the page. “From what we can tell by the tag on the Oldsmobile in the parking lot, the older woman is Helen Nice, a seventy-year-old widow who lived just a couple blocks away.” He looked up at Scott. “Both their purses are missing. Most of the cash is gone from the drawer, but there wasn’t much, because the manager left at four with a deposit.” He took a deep breath. “And KBI is on the way.”

“Great.” Scott knew the Kansas Bureau of Investigation would come in and re-take most of the photographs, re-run much of the lab work, and re-question the witnesses with excruciating thoroughness. “There should be plenty of evidence for them to collect.”

Bates nodded. “And a major headache sorting out killers from customers.”

Scott reran the trail he had followed from the door to the freezer. “Probably the best chance of identifiable prints belonging to the killer would come from the register or the freezer door.”

“Probably—” A commotion at the front of the store interrupted.

The officer who had been photographing the store came to the swinging door. “KBI’s here, Del.”

“Good,” Dr. Reichmuller came out of the freezer, shivering. “Now maybe I can get the bodies to the morgue and determine TOD.”

Chapter 29

Scott stood at the swinging door and watched two KBI agents sweep into the Quick Shop, nodding cursory approval of the evidence being processed on their way to the freezer.

“Todd,” Bates backed up to allow a tall man in his forties access to the freezer.

“Del, Dr. Reichmuller.” The agent stepped past them and into the freezer, while Scott stood in uncomfortable silence staring at the younger woman in a gray pantsuit who followed Todd in.

Del nodded at the woman. “Del Bates, PD.”

“Janice Fleming.” The woman paused to look toward Scott.

“Scott Aylward,” Scott offered.

She nodded her acknowledgement and stood beside Todd. Her lips went tight at what she saw, and Todd’s brows wrinkled in a frown, but otherwise neither officer gave outward acknowledgement to the horror Scott had felt when he looked upon the bloody frozen death scene.

“Photographed and measured?” Todd asked Bates.

Bates nodded. “Completely. Ready to be packaged up for the morgue.”

Todd turned away from the freezer. “Let’s get them on the way then. Let EMS take them.” He looked toward Scott. “Todd Horton.”

Scott nodded. It seemed the way KBI communicated. “Scott Aylward.” Bates spoke quietly into his microphone.

Horton walked past Scott to the center of the tiny storeroom. “Let’s see if we can find some of the mistakes these bastards made,” he said, more to himself than anyone in particular. No one responded.

Two EMT’s, each pushing a gurney, rattled into the storeroom, followed by another EMT bearing body bags. The gaze of each of them darted quickly toward each of the people in the storeroom, before they parked the gurneys outside the freezer. Scott backed up against a wall of shelves bearing boxes of chips, hemmed in by the gurneys. After a second’s hesitation, the EMT with the body bags moved into the freezer. The other two followed her.

“Have you looked at the surveillance tapes yet?” Looking to the right and then the left, Horton stepped into the store proper.

“Had the manager stop it, but we haven’t viewed it yet,” Bates said, following Horton, scanning high and low. “Wonder if these bastards trashed the store, or if some punks came in after and did it just for fun?”

Fleming followed Bates. Scott worked his way from behind the gurneys. He really didn’t want to be in the storeroom anyway when those bags came out of the freezer.

“We might find out when we look at it.” Horton stopped. “Where’s the manager?”

Bates inclined his head toward the front of the store. “Out in the chief’s unmarked.” He glanced back toward Scott. “Didn’t want her touching anything nor did I think she needed to be in there by the freezer any more than necessary.” He moved past Horton to escort them to the door. “EMS had to use smelling salts to help her calm down, and her husband got here twenty minutes ago.” He stepped carefully over the pool of melted ice cream where several boxes had been dumped on the floor. “What a waste,” he murmured to no one in particular.

“Whole damn thing is a waste,” Horton growled. “Those two women, the money, the mess. Damn punks.”

Scott caught up to Fleming. Her gaze roved the store, and Scott looked where she looked at the bags of chips and snacks in the next aisle, thrown to the floor and trampled. “Looks like either the murderers or someone had a high old time being destructive.”

“Yeah, they usually do on something like this.” She, too, carefully avoided the melted ice cream.

Mint chocolate chip. One of the treats he brought home when he needed to soften Rica’s attitude. Definitely a waste.

Horton reached the front door and the tech starting to lift prints. “Have you dusted the door of the freezer?”

The officer eyed Horton, then glanced at Bates. “Yes, sir, did that soon after Doc pronounced ’em dead.” He faced Horton. “If they were smart, they would have had the clerk open the freezer and then bumped it shut with their shoulders.” He glanced at the print he had just pulled from the door. “But I’m betting they weren’t smart.”

Horton grunted. “They usually aren’t.” He turned back to Bates. “Any indication they got into the manager’s office?”

Bates shook his head. “She locked the office when she left, and it was still locked when we called her back.” He paused. “We dusted the door and door knob, just to be safe.”

Horton studied the mirror above the door, angled to let the clerk see part of the store from behind the counter. “Well, then, let’s get the manager in here and go over those tapes.”

Chapter 30

Fifteen minutes later, Bates and Scott stood jammed into the manager’s tiny office, viewing the video surveillance tapes over the shoulders of the KBI and the manager. The camera didn’t run continuously; rather it swept the area by the cashier and the front door every other minute. The jerky video made Scott’s stomach rock.

On the grainy screen, Scott saw two people wearing ball caps and hoodies come into the store. They looked toward the clerk, but not toward the camera, then shuffled out of camera range. He struggled to read the time stamp on the screen, but even his 20/10 vision couldn’t make it out six feet away from a twelve-inch screen.

“That should be a cause for a clerk to be suspicious,” Horton snorted. “What kind of idiot wears a hoodie in hundred-degree weather?”

“The kind that wants to be ‘cool,’ Todd.” Fleming’s voice carried a tone of authority. “Gang members and wanna-bes are so desperate to fit in, that they do stupid stuff like that.” She leaned toward the screen. “Besides, it was 6:30 when they came in; it had cooled down to eighty-five or ninety by then.”

Scott regarded her with more respect. It sounded like she knew about gangs. He wondered if the robbery/murder was an initiation. On the screen another person entered the store. Mrs. Nice stopped to greet Amy, chatting for a moment before she walked out of camera range. Less than five minutes later, Mrs. Nice returned to the checkout. The two people wearing hoodies moved into line behind her. She said something to them, evidently a cordial greeting, then shrugged when she got no response. She plopped her purse on the counter and drew out a wallet. Then, one of the people behind her pulled his hand from the hoodie pocket. In the hand was a semi-automatic, and the thug waved it between Amy and Mrs. Nice. The other person grabbed Mrs. Nice’s arm and bent it behind her, pushing her toward the counter. Amy’s face did not appear on the screen, but the video clearly showed her hands raised. The criminal with the gun waved it around some more, and then shoved it toward her face. Her hands shook as she pushed the buttons to open the register. She dropped several coins while she thrust two fists full of bills toward the robber. The accomplice grabbed Mrs. Nice’s wallet, then punched the elderly woman in the stomach before shoving her toward the floor. She held onto the counter to keep from falling, and leaned her head on it. The robber with the gun looked briefly at the money before shoving it in his hoodie pocket. Then he waved the gun around more while his partner rifled through Mrs. Nice’s wallet. He shoved cash from the wallet into his pocket, then smacked Mrs. Nice in the face with the wallet. At the edge of the screen, Amy’s hands stretched out, as if she were pleading with the robbers. A few minutes later, she came into view, from behind the counter. The thug with the gun grabbed her shirt by the shoulder and propelled her toward the back of the store. The other one dragged Mrs. Nice to her feet and pushed her ahead of him. That one looked up momentarily toward the camera and Scott held his breath, trying to see details of his face.