LET ME BREATHE, page 5
She locked eyes with Claire. “Can you think of anyone—other than Jennie—who might want to hurt Hannah?”
“No. Everybody else loved her.”
Claire’s words hung in the air as the room sat silent for a moment.
Kevin scooted his chair back from the table. “That’s really all we can tell you.”
Wyatt stood and passed Kevin a business card.
“If you think of anything else, call us.”
Ashley opened the conference room door, thanking the couple as they walked back into the hallway. She wondered what information Evelyn Bass and Sam Hargrove could add to the investigation.
Would Hannah’s two agents accuse Jennie of the murder?
CHAPTER SEVEN
The killer’s pulse quickened as he peered through the back window into the bedroom of the trailer. Trina Hollis lay beneath a patchwork quilt colored faded shades of blue and yellow. Her caramel brown hair fanned across the left bed pillow like a halo, and a pink satin mask covered her eyes to block out the sunlight.
From watching her every day for the past two weeks, he knew that she’d sleep another hour. He’d memorized her routine. She worked the evening shift.
But tonight, Trina would be a no-show at the paper mill.
The killer turned to look over his shoulder.
“Stop your worrying,” he whispered. “I told you I’d do it.”
His accomplice lacked patience. Always nagging. Repeating the instructions, over and over. Afraid he wouldn’t follow through with the plan.
But he would.
He’d made a promise.
He skulked along the rear wall of the trailer toward the rusted-out charcoal grill where he’d seen Trina hide the front door key. The hinges squeaked as he raised the lid, the odor of stale ashes hitting his lungs. A smile spread across his face as he snatched up the key. Trina had made the task so easy for him. Almost as if she welcomed her fate.
As he crept around the end of the trailer into the front yard, he scanned the narrow road and the fenced cattle pasture across the street. The nearest home rested to the left of the trailer, on the other side of a grove of pine trees. There was no one in sight. No one to stop him.
“Like I told you, today’s the day,” he said in a hushed voice.
Dry leaves crumbled beneath his boots as he made his way toward the sagging wooden porch. Glancing at the road one last time, he stole up the steps. At some point in the past, Trina had painted the front door red. But the weather had faded the color and rust spots had grown where the paint had chipped.
With a gloved hand, he slipped the key into the lock. The tumblers clicked into place, and he eased open the door. The sun’s rays streamed through the double window, bathing the living room with light. He moved like a cat, his footfalls soft against the beige carpet.
A sheet of paper resting on top of the glass coffee table next to the worn brown sofa caught his eye. Trina had written a checklist, her cursive script filling the entire page. A roadmap of all the things she intended to do in the near future. Her plans brought a smirk to his lips. She didn’t have a future.
Trina would be dead in less than an hour.
He dropped the checklist back onto the coffee table. Pulling the quazodine from his jacket pocket, he held the vial up in the sunlight. The amber liquid appeared to glow as it sloshed inside the glass.
First, he’d take Trina’s keys from her purse and then her cell phone from the charging stand on her dresser. Then, he’d check the keyed deadbolt on the back door, making sure it was locked.
While she slept, he’d inject Trina with the quazodine. The pain from the prick would wake her. She’d have just enough time to slip off her eye mask, to see his face, before the tingling began. No doubt, she’d try to run. And he’d let her. She wouldn’t make it far before her legs went numb. She’d fall to the floor, unable to move.
But he wouldn’t kill her yet. Not here.
Trina would scream and beg and ask him why. He might even tell her after he’d taped her mouth shut. He’d throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the woods. He’d let her suffer for a short time. Let her agonize over the knowledge that she couldn’t do anything to stop him.
And then he’d bring out the garrote.
Late tonight, with darkness as his cover, he’d dump Trina’s body.
The crunching sound of tires on gravel jerked his attention toward the window. Ducking next to an armchair, so he couldn’t be seen, he peeked through the edge of the glass pane.
Dammit!
His heart thumped in his chest. He recognized the fancy car rolling up the driveway.
The lawyer was back.
He didn’t have time to deal with her now. Couldn’t risk getting caught. The killer rushed to the back door. Relief hit him when he found the deadbolt unlocked.
With a quick glance toward Trina’s bedroom, he slipped out into the backyard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ashley unpacked her laptop from the black carrying case, sliding it onto the battered metal table in the break room of the Sparks County Sheriff’s Department. Space was limited in the building that housed both the department and the county jail, so she and Wyatt were forced to work amid the traffic that flowed around the vending machines. At least there was a door to the room they could shut if they needed privacy.
“What do you think about Jennie Wilson and the murder-for-hire theory?” she asked Wyatt.
He fed a five-dollar bill into the vending machine.
“It’s a longshot,” he said, mashing his thumb against one of the buttons. “Can’t really rule it out. Not yet. But someone with a fresher motive might surface.”
She hoped that he was right.
They’d failed to extract any useful information from Evelyn Bass and Sam Hargrove. The agents claimed to have no idea why anyone would want Hannah dead. And neither of them had mentioned Jennie.
Whoever had murdered Hannah had obviously wanted to make a statement. Whether the J stood for a name—or something else entirely—leaving the message had been important enough for the killer to take the time to move the heavy drums. And unless he’d been wearing a hazmat suit, he’d risked exposure to the toxic chemicals.
Had he arranged the barrels before or after the murder?
The sadistic way in which she’d been killed also said a lot about the perpetrator. To Ashley, the murder felt personal as though the killer harbored an extreme hatred for Hannah.
“Do you think the killer took Hannah to the landfill because he thought of her as a piece of trash?” Ashley asked.
Wyatt peered at her over his coffee cup. “Sounds logical.”
Ashley heard his cell phone chirp. She recognized the trill indicating that he’d received a text message.
Placing his coffee on the table, Wyatt pulled his phone from the pocket of his sports jacket. His face clouded as he read the screen.
“I have to make a call,” he said.
Wyatt veered around the table and then hurried out the break room door.
Alarmed, Ashley wondered what had happened. Was the message work related? She hoped that Brenda wasn’t still angry with Wyatt. That the deputy director hadn’t decided to fire him.
Or was it something personal?
Not fond of small talk—at least not with Ashley—Wyatt had never shared anything about his family. She had no idea whether his parents were still living or if he had siblings. The only thing he’d told her was that he’d grown up in the Nashville suburb of Newberry. And she’d had to pry that information out of him.
Whatever the message had said, he’d obviously wanted to handle it in private. She just hoped that it wasn’t anything serious.
Ashley turned her attention back to the homicide. She logged into the TBI database and scrolled through the photos uploaded from the crime scene. The body had already been removed and autopsied before the TBI was invited onto the case. But the sheriff’s deputies who’d responded to the 911 call had taken several photographs. The photos from the autopsy had been uploaded as well.
Hannah had been discovered lying on her back, her arms straight down by her sides. She’d been fully clothed and had been wearing a diamond wedding set. Her purse—still containing her credit cards and seventy-four dollars in cash—had been left next to her feet. So, robbery had been ruled out as one of the motives.
A pang of revulsion hit Ashley as she studied the ligature marks striping Hannah’s flesh. According to the medical examiner, the killer had tightened the garrote around the woman’s neck at least four times. Three of those times, he’d brought Hannah to the edge of death and then released the pressure, torturing her.
He’d wanted Hannah to suffer.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Ashley looked up to see Wyatt trudging through the doorway. He sank into the chair across the table from her and grabbed his coffee cup. She could tell he was making an attempt to don his poker face, but it wasn’t working. He couldn’t hide the fact that something was troubling him. And it wasn’t just the homicide case.
Although they weren’t close—weren’t even friends—her heart went out to Wyatt.
“You know, people have often told me that I’m a good listener,” she said, concern in her tone.
He refused to meet her gaze, instead staring into his cup.
She waited in silence, giving him a chance to gather his thoughts. When he finally spoke, his words weren’t what she’d expected.
“Find anything we missed?” he asked, motioning toward her laptop.
He clearly didn’t feel comfortable enough with her to divulge what had upset him. That was okay. She’d back off. The offer had been made, and he knew that she was there if he needed to talk.
“I’m not sure whether we’ve actually missed anything or not. I was just going over the photos taken at the murder scene.”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking: why the hazardous landfill? Why not the regular county dump?”
Ashley had wondered the same thing.
“Maybe the killer wanted to project the notion that Hannah was toxic,” she said. “That she was someone who deserved to be tortured and killed.”
He seemed to ponder the idea for a second. “Maybe.”
A memory flashed in Ashley’s mind.
“There was a family I knew as a child back in Laurel County,” she began. “The father had worked for years at a meat processing plant. When it closed down, he had to take a much lower-paying job. He was struggling to pay the family’s bills—they had five children. Anyway, he ended up taking out a loan on the house and land that had originally belonged to his grandfather.”
“And he couldn’t make the payments,” Wyatt guessed.
“Right. The bank foreclosed on the property. They kicked the family out, but before he left, the man set fire to the house. It burned to the ground.”
Ashley’s father had explained to her and her brothers, who had been too young to understand the reasoning behind the fire, that the man would rather destroy his heritage than see it taken over by a stranger.
“That’s a sad story.”
“Maybe something like that happened to the killer. Maybe Hannah sold a foreclosed house for a mortgage company.”
The murderer had rendered Hannah helpless, unable to fight back. Much like a person would feel if they were losing their home. Especially if the property had been in their family for generations.
“It’s worth looking into,” Wyatt said.
“I’ll call Glynis and find out whether there were any recent foreclosure sales.”
As Ashley reached for her phone, she glanced at her laptop. She’d scrolled to the photo on the screen right before hearing Wyatt’s footsteps in the hallway. She hadn’t yet studied the shot. Now, something caught her eye.
“You know, I think we did miss something at the crime scene,” she said.
A tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire surrounded the three-hundred-acre landfill. Ashley zoomed in on the left side of the photo, getting a better look at the fence’s open double gate.
“There’s a padlock hanging from one side of the landfill’s gate,” she said. “I don’t remember reading anything in the file about a forced entry. Was the gate unlocked at the time of the murder?”
Wyatt pulled his own laptop toward him. “Some of the sheriff’s notes aren’t in the printed file.”
Ashley heard a clacking sound as Wyatt’s fingers raced across his keyboard. She assumed that he was searching through the reports.
“Here it is,” he said. “The workmen said the gate was locked the day of the murder. It was still locked when they arrived the next morning and found the body.”
There was no way the killer could have hoisted Hannah over the razor wire. And Ashley knew the TBI forensic team had checked the fence’s perimeter. If there had been a breach, they would have noticed it.
“Then how on earth did the murderer get inside?”
“Maybe he had a key.”
It made perfect sense. If the killer was an employee of the landfill and had access to the key, he’d be able to come and go as he pleased. It would explain the reason he’d chosen that particular location for the murder.
“We need to go through the employee list and find out if any of the workers have a criminal record,” Ashley said.
“Already on it. I’ll start at the top. You start from the bottom. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”
The landfill employed twenty people. Ashley worked her way up the list, finding no incriminating records for the first nine employees. When she entered the name of the tenth, she realized that she’d hit on a viable suspect.
“I just found a guy who was arrested for domestic assault six months ago. His ex-wife accused him of strangling her.”
Wyatt met Ashley’s gaze over the lid of his laptop. “Sounds promising.”
“And that’s not all,” she said, her lips curling into a smile.
“His last name starts with a J.”
CHAPTER NINE
Ashley held her breath as she watched Wyatt steady the SUV’s steering wheel with his knee while he tapped a message into his phone. With his attention split between his screen and the road, she was thankful for the thirty-mile speed limit along the primary streets of Tomlinson. She wished that he’d pull over somewhere and finish his communications before they reached the highway, but she could tell that he wasn’t in the mood to hear her opinion on the matter.
As before in the break room, Wyatt seemed jarred by another text he’d received just as they veered out of the parking lot of the Sparks County Sheriff’s Department. Only this time, he hadn’t made a call. Ashley couldn’t help but wonder whether his decision to text a reply was to prevent her from hearing what was going on with him. She just hoped that his choice wouldn’t lead to a car crash.
Wyatt sighed and dropped his phone on the center console, screen down. Was that to keep her from trying to read his messages? If so, he needn’t have bothered. The only time she’d ever been guilty of snooping was when she was tracking down a criminal. It irritated her that he didn’t know that.
But maybe he did know. Maybe he wasn’t even conscious of how he’d placed his phone.
It was obvious to Ashley that something major had happened—something that had Wyatt on edge. And she was pretty sure it didn’t involve the TBI. If Brenda had reprimanded him again, he’d likely be angry. Might even voice his hostility and complain about their boss’s stringent behavior. But the expression he was fighting so hard to erase from his face seemed to be more akin to worry than ire.
Ashley decided to offer her support once more.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
He hesitated for a moment, his eyes now focused on the street.
“Solve the case,” he said.
This time, she got the message loud and clear. His private life was none of her business. Which oddly enough was the same thought she’d had about Wyatt when Daniel had texted her. She’d wanted to keep her professional and personal lives separate—and still did. She understood Wyatt’s reasoning.
So why did she feel just a tiny bit offended?
Pushing her frustration aside, Ashley glanced at the navigation system’s screen. The highway they needed to take was just up ahead. The TBI wouldn’t release the crime scene until tomorrow at the earliest, so for now, the landfill was closed for business. They’d be questioning their suspect—Luke Jenkins—on his home turf.
Although the man had been arrested for domestic assault, he’d not been convicted. His ex-wife had requested that the charges be dropped. And most likely thinking about the county’s budget, and the cost of a trial, the district attorney had agreed.
Had Jenkins really strangled his ex? Ashley knew that it was common for battered women to recant their stories out of fear of being harmed again. She’d only heard of a few cases where accusations of domestic abuse had been fabricated.
The Hickory Grove Trailer Court popped into view on the right side of the narrow highway. Wyatt chewed his bottom lip while he made the turn into the park. Was his mind weighing the details of the case? She’d had trouble reading him in the past, but she guessed he was most likely still contemplating his own problems.
Despite the name of the park, Ashley only spotted a few oaks and maples dotting the pint-sized lots—no hickories. As the SUV crawled along the gravel lane, she felt eyes peering at them from the trailer windows. The residents were sure to notice a strange vehicle in their midst.
Wyatt glanced at Ashley. “What was Jenkins’s number again?”
“He lives at lot fourteen.”
As they rounded a curve, Ashley spotted Jenkins’s beige, single-wide mobile home. Two vehicles crowded the short driveway: a dusty green pickup and an older, dark blue sedan. With no room to park in the drive, Wyatt eased the SUV onto the gravel lane’s narrow shoulder.
Sliding out of the passenger seat, Ashley hopped across a shallow ditch bordering Jenkins’s front yard. She swerved to the left, dodging a pole with a satellite dish mounted at the top, and met Wyatt as he walked up the driveway.
