Heroes In Uniform (259 page)

“Hey, John,” Deputy Danny Widen said as he knocked on the door and poked his head in John’s office. “I’m taking off for lunch.”

“Mmm.” John nodded absently but kept his eyes on the evidence and coroner’s report spread out on the table in front of him. After the way he’d felt last night with Katelyn—as though he wanted to tear her clothes off, rip any man who looked at her to shreds, and take her right there in the bar to claim her as his—well, he needed to focus on putting her back in the category she belonged in. He didn’t have a clue why he’d acted like he had when he and Katelyn had gone out with his friends. One minute, she was irritating the daylights out of him with her prickly attitude and stubborn pride and the next, he’d been fantasizing about her on a pool table.

Katelyn was his mentor’s only daughter and a woman who had made it clear she didn’t like him. To top it off, he was fairly sure she’d seen something when she was little. She was potentially a witness to the only major crime this tiny town had ever seen: her mother’s murder, which meant he had no business going near her in anything other than a professional way.

Years before, during his undercover stint in New York City, he’d gotten involved with a witness. It ended with Lexi dead and him wishing he were too. He’d come to Evers, running from ghosts and a past he couldn’t bear to face. It was Katelyn’s father who had slowly pulled him back from the anger and hatred he was drowning in. He wouldn’t repay Alan by sleeping with his daughter or putting her in danger by losing focus like he had in New York.

Ha! As if she’d ever want that to happen
. He hadn’t been able to keep from touching her last night at every opportunity, but she’d moved away any chance she could. The woman had made it clear she wasn’t interested. Why couldn’t he just leave it at that and walk away?

Danny’s voice cut into John’s thoughts again. “Heard you took Katelyn Bowden out the other night.”

There was a grin in Danny’s voice that told him the whole office was probably talking about John and Katelyn. John raised his eyes to give him a look sure to cut off that topic before it began.

Danny cleared his throat and raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Never mind.”

John sighed. “It’s all right, Danny. Have a good lunch.” He shouldn’t be biting the heads off his guys just because it was obvious to everyone around him that he had a thing for Katelyn.

“What’s that?” Danny asked, stepping further into the room and eyeing the contents of the table. John usually worked on Caroline Bowden’s case at home or at Alan’s house. The young deputy in front of him probably didn’t know anything other than what the newspapers had printed or the rumor mill had churned up over the years. John had pulled out the case files and grabbed the evidence out of storage today to remind himself that Katelyn was a witness. She was a link in the case and nothing more to him. It wasn’t working, but at least he could tell himself he was trying.

“Caroline Bowden’s case file,” John said, looking up at Danny. “I keep hoping I’ll see something new since Alan, well, you know….” John didn’t mention his theory that Katelyn had seen the murder. The less anyone knew about that, the better.

“I’ve never seen the file,” Danny said and John couldn’t miss the hopeful tone. Danny was young and eager. He didn’t have any experience working a case like this, but it wouldn’t hurt to have someone new look at it. And, maybe in explaining things to Danny, John might make a connection or see something he’d missed all these years.

“Fresh eyes can’t hurt,” John said, sliding some of the papers toward Danny.

Berta poked her head in the room. “I’ve got fresh eyes. Well, that’s not true. They’re old as dirt. But they’re fresh on this,” she said with a nod toward the table.

John waved her in.

“There isn’t much to the file. Caroline Bowden was found by her employer, Charlie Hanford.” John didn’t have to tell Danny or Berta who Charlie Hanford was. Everyone in town knew Charlie as the owner of the biggest real estate development company in the area. He’d been responsible for building the large retirement community, Sol City, just outside of town back in the 1980s, and still owned most of the commercial real estate in town.

John picked up the file and read off the pertinent details. “She was murdered on February 27, 1986 in an apparent robbery. Caroline was Charlie’s bookkeeper and she routinely worked out at his house in the home office he keeps there, since his job site offices move around from site to site as he works on different projects. Charlie kept petty cash of about $2,000 in a small lockbox in his desk. The lockbox and money were missing. Caroline had been beaten to death. Charlie found her and called it in, but she couldn’t be revived. She was dead when the paramedics arrived.”

“Murder weapon?” Danny asked, pointing to the sealed evidence bag that contained a heavy stone bookend. It was a carved statue of some kind of ancient deity with a squat round body and three arms extending out on either side. It was ugly as sin but quite distinctive.

“No.” John shook his head. “We never found the murder weapon, but this is one-half of a set Charlie had on the shelf near his desk. The other is missing. Caroline was found right next to his desk. There’s a door leading from the office out to a patio and the backyard. That lock had been broken from the outside.”

John picked up the stone bookend in its plastic evidence bag. “The coroner said this matched the wounds on her head, so we believe the matching one was the murder weapon. The assailant likely took it with him when he fled the scene. We kept an eye on pawn shops in the area and put out a notice about it to shops all around the state. It’s a fairly valuable piece according to Charlie, so we hoped we might catch a break when the murderer tried to sell it, but it’s never turned up.”

Danny picked up the notes from the responding officers on the scene. They had both retired years ago and one had passed away a few years back. Alan Bowden was on scene, of course, but didn’t work the case. He’d written his own notes that weren’t part of the official file, but Danny scanned those next, as well as the coroner’s report before handing them to Berta to read. John waited patiently, wondering if anything might jump out.

“Not much here,” Danny said dejectedly, as he set the papers down and looked at the table. He was right. There had been no foreign prints and many of the surfaces, including the drawer where the petty cash was kept, had been wiped clean. There were no witnesses. The woman who cleaned Charlie’s house hadn’t been there that day and Charlie had seen nothing suspicious when he arrived home. There was, in fact, nothing to go on.

“The theory has always been that it was that guy who worked for Charlie, right? What was his name?” Danny asked, and John could see he wanted to come up with an answer as much as John did. There just weren’t any answers. He needed to see if he could jog Katelyn’s memories. Help her remember what, if anything, she saw as a child.

“Ken Statler. The guy had only worked for Charlie for a month before the murder and he disappeared right after. Everyone thought he needed money, knew about the petty cash, and went there to steal it. Theory is, when Caroline walked in on him, he killed her and then took off. He was never spotted again after that.”

Danny looked at John almost apologetically. “It’s a sound theory.”

“Except when you take into account that Ken Statler drove a nice truck and had a great set of tools he took with him from job to job,” Berta said. “My sister’s husband worked with him some. Said he was a real standup guy. He was known to work for a contractor for a short time before moving on, but he had worked his way through this part of Texas a couple times over the years. Never heard a bad word about that guy. Why would he need to steal if he had that truck and all those tools?”

John shook his head. He hadn’t been in town when the murder happened, so he could only go by what was in the reports. “None of his past employers ever had a bad word to say about the guy, except that they wished he would have stuck around longer. He just didn’t seem to like to stay in one place, but that’s no crime. And, you’re right; with a truck and tools like that, if he needed money, he could have sold either of those instead of turning to burglary and assault.”

Danny grunted his agreement and picked up one of the sets of notes he’d looked through earlier. “Yeah, but his truck was seen in Charlie’s driveway. Red pickup. Late model Ford.”

A half grunt came from Berta.

“What?” John asked and watched his dispatcher intently.

She looked at the younger men with exasperation clear on her craggy features. “Half a dozen men around town drove a red truck back then. Heck, I could probably walk outside and find five or six late model Ford pickups on this block that are red.” She started ticking off names on her fingers. “Don Canton, Big Earl Walters, his son Little Earl, Sam Denton…. They all had one back then.”

“Sam?” John asked as he held his breath, a hard knot forming in his gut.

She nodded. “Sure. Sam Denton had a red truck up until ten, twelve years ago. And he used to be parked up at Hanford’s place all the time for work—still does. And Little Earl went by there sometimes to drop stuff off for his dad. His daddy owns that office supply place out on Route 190. Little Earl made deliveries. So, he’d be up at Charlie’s place sometimes, too. Who’s to say if Ken Statler was really there that day if no one saw him or at least a license plate or something?” They’d all read the notes. They knew the witnesses hadn’t specified. They’d just said a red truck.

All three of them stood and stared at the evidence on the table, as if they hoped something would jump up and wave at them, leading them to the right answer. Instead, it seemed they’d succeeded in making things murkier than they’d ever been.

“Danny, can you see if Marcy Whorton still lives in town? She was the neighbor who reported the truck. See if she actually remembers seeing Ken Statler there or if she just assumed the truck was his.”

“Marcy moved out to Sol City years ago. I’ll try to find out if she’s still out there,” Berta said as she left the room.

John got up and clapped Danny on the shoulder. “Go get some lunch then touch base with Berta about Marcy Whorton. If she’s still at Sol City, get out there in the next day or so and talk to her.”

“You got it, boss,” Danny said as he left.

And I’ll figure out how to get Katelyn to remember what she saw, what her father and aunt tried to protect her from all these years.

John couldn’t imagine why Alan had never told him about Katelyn. Maybe Katelyn told her father what she saw when she was a child—before she blocked it out. Maybe Alan had already chased that lead and dismissed it. John had to admit, though, the fact that Alan apparently hadn’t trusted him with that secret ate at him. He stared back at the evidence on the table and wondered how much more Alan hadn’t told him.

* * *

John stepped out through the double doors of the hospital’s north entrance into the blinding heat of the Texas sun. He didn’t really mind the heat most days and definitely preferred it to cold, but his uniform wasn’t exactly made for staying cool and comfortable. He resisted the temptation to undo several buttons of his shirt. He may just have to talk to the uniform rep who kept coming by the office with samples of special wicking fabrics and uniform shirts that were vented along the sides and back for hot weather.

The way this summer was heating up, he might even let the rep convince him that wearing shorts as part of his force’s uniform wasn’t completely unprofessional looking.

The trip to the hospital hadn’t gotten him any closer to figuring out what, if anything, Katelyn might have witnessed. Alan had been asleep when he arrived, and he was groggy from the pain medication they were giving him. The nurse told him they’d had to increase the dosage to try to help him get some rest through the pain.

John looked out toward the parking lot, planning to head left toward his cruiser, but a flash of blond caught his eye instead, making him swing right.
Katelyn.

What the heck?
She was limping and moving slower than Berta trying to avoid a direct order.

“Katelyn!” he called out as he jogged toward her. “What happened?” He took her small hand in his, turning her arm over gently to reveal a huge swath of livid road rash up her left side. The sight of it made him sick. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and hold her. Something he knew for sure she would hate. Not to mention something he shouldn’t be doing. He needed distance between them, and holding her sure as hell wouldn’t put it there.

She pulled her hand back slowly, almost as if to prove his point, as if she’d read his thoughts. “Nothing. It’s not a big deal. I fell last night when I was out running.”

John wondered if she pulled back out of embarrassment or pain or something else.

“You fell?” he echoed. John looked at Katelyn and waited for a better explanation. You didn’t get road rash like that from tripping and falling.

She shook her head at him as if he were a child and she had all the patience in the world for his pitiful inquiries. “You can stop worrying, John. It really was nothing. I went out running and forgot there aren’t any lights at night here. It got darker much faster than I thought it would and I wasn’t wearing a reflective vest. A truck came at me and I had to jump out of the way. End of story.”

“You could’ve been killed, Katelyn. What were you thinking? And why didn’t you report it?” he asked, and although he knew he was towering over her and intimidating her, she didn’t back down, didn’t flinch a bit. Damn. He wanted her to flinch. To take this seriously. To worry just a little bit about the gravity of the situation. About the real possibility she could have been killed.

The thought that she could have been hurt out there bothered him a hell of a lot more than he’d like it to. The least she could do was take his concern seriously.

She brushed it off like it was nothing. “John, I get it. It was bad. But it was probably just teenagers messing around and they took it one step too far. I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it, okay?”