Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Dunkin’ Donuts, Memphis

Detective Dudley Stephens and his partner, Detective Jackson “Jack” Jordan, were in a Dunkin’ Donuts in west Memphis grabbing doughnuts and coffee for a late afternoon break when the call came in.

“A hysterical woman is calling for assistance at 1310 Fawn Grove Road.”

Chills went through Dudley. He knew that place.

“We’re on it,” Jack said.

“What’s the nature of the problem?” Dudley asked.

“We don’t know,” the dispatcher told him. “The woman just keeps screaming, ‘Help! Please hurry.’”

Dudley put the siren on and tore toward the house he knew like the back of his hand—his brother Charlie’s new house, the one he’d bought only six weeks ago with his wife Laura.

The car roared along the river and wound among oak trees showing the first greening of spring. Flowering dogwood and wild pear trees dotted the lane with white blossoms.

Nature’s extravagant display of beauty was a stark contrast to the scene he witnessed at his brother’s house. Laura was standing in front of Charlie’s workshop, her face red from screaming, the garage door open, a carnage behind her.

Blood. Everywhere. On the floor, the walls, the workbench, the skill saw, the hammer, the sander, and the wood that was being transformed into a chair by the carpenter, who was nowhere in sight.

Bile rose in Dudley’s throat and terror seized him so it was impossible to move. “Where’s Charlie?” His sister-in-law looked at him without seeing him, her eyes blank, her expression terrified. She kept shaking her head. No. No. No. “LAURA!. Where’s my brother?”

Jack clamped a hand over his shoulder. “Easy now. I’ve got this.” He called for backup then moved toward Laura Stephens, graceful for such a big man, huge and muscular. At only thirty, he had the easy confidence and skills of a much more seasoned cop, tough on criminals but surprisingly gentle with victims. He was a distant cousin to the sports legend Michael Jordan, a connection that gave him bragging rights he never used.

“Can you tell me what happened here?” He leaned close to Laura, his face a mask of kindness and concern. She backed up as if she’d been slapped. “Take your time. Do you need a drink of water first?”

She shook her head as if she were shaking off the shock. Her story came out in disconnected sighs. She’d been at the grocery store and had come home to find the workshop covered with blood and her husband missing. She’d searched everywhere, calling his name though every inch of the house and as much of their five-acre property as she could manage.

“How long were you gone?”

She hesitated, uncertain. “Two hours?”

Backup arrived, sirens screaming. Jack led her away from the door so the team would have easy access. They quickly went to work in the garage, photographing the scene then tagging and bagging.

When the bloody hammer went into the bag, Dudley recoiled at the idea of someone using it to bludgeon his brother. Or had his brother used it to bludgeon someone else, and then run?

Blood spatter went up the walls, consistent with a bludgeoning. But then...

“We’ve got tissue clinging to the teeth of the skill saw.”

This was a nightmare. When he spotted bone dust on the floor, horror took hold of him and wouldn’t let go. There was no way his older brother was capable of using a hammer against another human being, let alone a skill saw. Charlie was the kindest, most giving man he’d ever known. He had sacrificed his future so Dudley could go to the police academy, make something of himself, lift himself out of the nightmare of poverty and drunkenness they had both endured growing up.

The frightful discoveries continued. Blood encrusted a carving knife, the hatchet Charlie used to chop down smaller trees on his property that would later become a spindle or a piece of molding, and the toolbox with all manner of screwdrivers, chisels. and wire cutters. A pair of bloody goggles lay near the table where his recent work lay, unfinished.

The plastic coverings over Dudley’s shoes turned red and slick as he helped process the scene. Slaughter screamed through his mind. This was not just a murder scene; it was a house of horrors where his brother had been brutally slaughtered. He didn’t need forensic results to tell him that.

But why? Everybody loved Charlie. He had no enemies.

His gaze swung to his sister-in-law, Laura, the woman Charlie adored. She had appeared so suddenly in his life, and so late, none of them knew much about her. Not really.

Charlie had met her three years ago at the only social for singles he had ever attended. He was thirty-seven years old at the time and had given up that he would ever find someone to love on his own. Laura, a quiet redhead, had been sitting in the corner of the community center by herself. Not dancing. Not socializing. Charlie sat down beside her and they spent the rest of the evening talking.

She had just moved to Memphis from Little Rock, Arkansas, an orphan with no family, who had lived in various foster homes until she was eighteen. Then she had made her way in the world waiting tables and cleaning houses until she finally got enough money to go to beauty school. She was proud of being a licensed hair stylist, and she was excited about working in a bigger salon and meeting new people.

Was she sweet? Yes. Was she kind and soft-spoken. Yes. Did she love Charlie? Yes, it appeared so.

His mantra with his partner Jack whispered through Dudley’s mind. You can’t trust what you think you see.

He and his wife and two small children had been at Charlie’s wedding, but Laura didn’t have a soul there. Not even a friend. Was she who she claimed to be? Could she have fooled him and his brother, both?

She stood in the front yard about a hundred feet from the garage, composed now, hugging herself and rocking slightly back and forth on her Converse sneakers. Dudley felt a twinge of guilt. He should comfort her. Charlie would want it.

But what he knew, what he saw, held him in place.

The last rays of sunset cast an orange light over her, so she appeared to be standing in the middle of a fire. She watched every move inside the workshop as if she were cataloging it for future reference. There were no tears, no signs of the high emotion of the woman who had made a frantic phone call to the Memphis Police Department.

Her shoes were bloody, and so was the hem of her khaki slacks. She’d left tracks near the kitchen door and one bloody handprint on the wall nearby. She’d wiped her bloody hands along her face at the hairline and on her white blouse and the sides of her slacks.

Dudley’s heart constricted. This was a murder scene, and his sister-in-law was the prime suspect.