Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Memphis Police Department

Laura Finnegan Stephens, still wearing her blood-stained clothes, sat in the interrogation room waiting to elaborate on the sketchy details she had given police at the scene. Her hands were in her lap, her face was a perfect blank. She was so erect and unmoving, she might have been a robot.

Dudley and his partner stood on the other side of the one-way mirror, watching her.

“She hasn’t moved in five minutes,” Jack said. “Is she always like this?”

“She’s quiet, but I’ve never had any reason, and not much occasion, to study her. Charlie…” He choked up, almost lost it. “We got together every now and then for beers. No wives. You already know this.” When Jack wasn’t off with some hot young chick, he was always there to share a beer. Easy going and fun, a respite from Dudley’s increasingly stressful home-life.

If Jack was surprised by Dudley’s sparse social life, especially where his brother was concerned, he didn’t show it. He barely knew Gloria Jean. She hated being a cop’s wife and kept contact with his partner and cohorts to a bare minimum.

She would have scoffed at the idea of having beer with them. Her excuse for everything was, I’m too busy with the girls. At ages five and seven, they were a handful, but still… it seemed his wife could try to understand the pressures of his work.

He didn’t have a clue whether Laura would have joined them. It was always just him and his brother, best friends all their lives.

Charlie was five years older than Dudley. Through the years he had been both brother and parent to him, clumsily changing his diaper while their mother lay drunk on the sofa; smearing peanut butter on crackers, the only food in the house; washing what few clothes they had; patching the soles of their worn-out shoes with paper bags from the liquor store.

Jack’s hand on Dudley’s shoulder said I’m here for you, no words necessary. Their partnership had always been like that. They always had each other’s backs, no matter what.

“Have you ever seen Charlie’s wife mad at him?”

“No. But I wasn’t around them much, and Charlie wouldn’t have told me. He was private that way.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. We’ll get whoever did this.” Jack squeezed his shoulder and then walked off toward the interrogation room.

When he entered, Laura barely reacted, just nodded and kept her hands folded in her lap. He straddled the chair on the opposite side of the table and quietly explained the procedure to her. She would be recorded. She could have an attorney present if she chose. She was simply giving a formal statement that might reveal details she had forgotten in the immediate aftermath of the events that took place in her garage.

“Walk me through the exact timeline,” Jack said. “What time did you leave the house?”

“After lunch.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“It was around two because the TV was on in the kitchen and my favorite soap opera had just started airing, Beyond the Sunset Skies.”

“Where was Charlie when you left?”

“In his workshop.”

“Was anyone besides your husband in the house?”

“No. Just Charlie. He went in there after we ate, like always.”

“Was he expecting anyone?” She shook her head. “A client, perhaps. Someone to pick up furniture or place a new order?”

“Not that I know of. I fix hair, he makes furniture. It’s just the way we live. We don’t discuss each other’s business.”

“How long were you gone?”

“I told you. Four hours?”

“Actually, you told us two.”

She pushed her hair off her face. “I… I was upset. It was closer to four.”

“It takes you that long to get groceries?”

“I… had to get gas. And… I stopped to pick up the dry cleaning.”

“Where?” Jack asked, and Laura shook her head. “Do you have receipts?” She shook her head again.

“I.. don’t know. I’ll have to look.”

Watching through the one-way mirror, Dudley felt his stomach clench. Until they processed the evidence from the garage and heard back from the team left behind to question the neighbors and search the property for clues, they were going to have very little to work with. So far, Laura’s information surrounding Charlie’s last moments was as sparse as the information about the life she’d lived before she came to Memphis.

Jack walked her through the usual routine. Had there been any suspicious phone calls? Strange persons or cars in the neighborhood? Was Charlie worried about anything? Had anyone threatened him? Or her? Did Charlie owe money to anybody, perhaps have some gambling debts?

Laura’s string of monosyllabic no’s had Dudley wanting to ram his fist into the wall.

How could a woman who lived a picture-perfect life in a blissfully peaceful marriage suddenly find her garage covered with blood and her husband missing? He had to restrain himself from racing into the interrogation room and screaming at his sister-in-law. He forced himself to pay attention to every detail beyond the one-way mirror.

Jack’s impatience with the scarce information and Laura’s total lack of emotion showed in the way he tightened his jaw and sat more erect in his chair, every muscle in his body tensed for action, as if, suddenly, Laura might snap and lunge across the table at him screaming, I did it. I did it!

Suddenly Jack leaned across the table. “Mrs. Stephens, did you kill your husband?”

“NO!” She covered her mouth with both hands then hung her head, her shoulders shaking.

“Did you have someone kill him?” Clamping her lips tight, she shook her head again. “Are you sure about that? Four hours is a long time to get groceries.”

Laura turned mute again, sitting in her chair like stone, staring into space.

Dudley’s brother was out there, somewhere. Probably dead. Who could survive an attack that left that kind of carnage?

And he didn’t have a single clue where to find him.

It was senseless. Insane. Rage filled him so he lost track of what was going on inside the interrogation room. He raised his balled fists and almost smashed them through the one-way mirror before he regained control. He needed a drink.

Footsteps echoed on the tile floor, and Jack squeezed his shoulder with a hand the size of a Virginia ham. “You okay, buddy?’

“I will be. Give me a minute.”

“Sure thing. Laura clammed up.”

“I saw. What about a lie detector test?”

“She didn’t say yes. But she didn’t say no.”

“Then let’s get busy. Time’s running out for my brother.”

Night was already upon them and the hours were ticking away. Dudley pushed through his rage and hurried down the hall with Jack where the rest of the team had gathered. A table with coffee, soft drinks, pizza, and doughnuts stood against one side of the wall, and hard metal chairs were in a haphazard semicircle around a cork-board that held photos of the scene.

Seeing them, his stomach turned. It seemed impossible that only this morning he had called Charlie to arrange to meet after his shift at Big Jim’s Brews near the river. He would never share another beer with his brother. The knowledge unleashed a flood of grief that threatened to swamp him.

Buck up. You can do this. It was Charlie’s voice echoing from the past. Dudley stiffened his spin and grabbed a cup of coffee. The idea of food turned his stomach.

Normally, he would be the lead detective, but considering the presumed victim was his brother, Jack would take the lead.

Commander John Evans strode into the room. He’d been in charge of the homicide squad for fifteen years, a gray-haired and seasoned man who was both street-wise and savvy.

“The intruder picked the lock and entered through the back door leading into the den.” He pointed to a diagram of Charlie’s house. “From there, he went through the kitchen, kicked over the cat’s water dish, probably accidentally, and then entered the workshop through the door from the kitchen into the garage.”

He moved the pointer to Charlie’s worktable. “From the position of the victim’s work table and the arrangement of tools and supplies on it, we can safely conclude the intruder would have surprised him from behind.”

Coward, came to Dudley’s mind. But the attack in broad daylight and the evidence of a brutal killing told him something else: this looked like a professional hit from somebody out for revenge.

The question was, why?

With no results yet from the evidence they’d gathered, the facts they knew were sparse. Commander Evans went through the timeline as they knew it. Laura’s had changed, so hers was mere supposition.

The guys who had stayed at the scene to question neighbors reported that Charlie’s closest neighbor had not been home, and none of the other neighbors had seen any suspicious vehicles or persons in the neighborhood. The privacy afforded by the large wooded lots in the neighborhood also provided isolation that would allow anyone with ill intent to sneak around undetected.

“Keep digging,” the commander said. “Question the neighbors again, and focus on finding the closest neighbor. This time, ask questions about the Stephens’ relationship, too. I want a team at the beauty salon where the wife works. It’s Curl Up and Dye off Poplar. Somebody, somewhere, saw or knows something.”

Dudley had never been more grateful for his commander’s never-give-up, positive attitude. It boosted morale, even his own.

Still, his need for a drink was overwhelming. By the time the criminal investigation squad left headquarters, it was two in the morning, and raining.

“You okay?” Jack said. “You need me to stick around a while?”

Dudley waved him off. “Go home and get some rest. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t. He stood with the rain soaking his hair and clothes while he watched his partner head for home, a neat bachelor’s pad in a shabby, crime-ridden neighborhood, which was about all he could afford on a cop’s salary.

Home for Dudley was a small green cottage in an older section on the east side of town that had failed to enjoy the gentrification taking places in other parts of Memphis. His lawn needed mowing, as did most of his neighbors’ yards. The paint on his green shutters was fading, his roof need replacing, and his wife was losing interest. Fast.

He couldn’t face her. Not now. Although his daughters would be fast asleep, he didn’t want to see them, either. The murder scene clung to him like pollen he couldn’t wash off. He felt tainted by it, sickened, as if he had a contagious disease his children might catch.

He drove until he found saw the blinking neon sign, Big Jim’s Brews. Open 24-7.

He sat in his car, wrestling with his need and his conscience. Charlie was out there in the rain. Lost.

Need won.

Dudley got out of his car, ducked his head against the downpour, and hurried into the bar. It was almost empty. He slid onto the bar stool. Three stools down a woman with purple hair was crying into her whiskey glass. He knew her. She worked Beale Street.

She glanced up at him. Cringed. “You after me, cop?”

“Not tonight, Brenda.” Big Jim, himself, approached, and Dudley told him, “One for the road, Jim.”

“Where’s your brother tonight?”

The question ripped through him like shrapnel. That was the question. Where was Charlie?

He rubbed his hand over his face as if he might physically remove the fear and the rage that were tearing him apart. There was no way he could—or would—explain to Big Jim what had happened in Charlie’s workshop.

“He’s not coming.”

He would never come again. The realization tore a hole in Dudley’s heart, and he sat there, feeling love and hope and belief in mankind leak out of him, fall to the floor, and drain through the cracks in the ancient floorboard. Without his brother, he was half a man.