Marcie's Murder (6 page)

Now she was sitting
in
the big front window of Mary’s Donuts on Bluefield Street finishing her
second
super
-
size
d
coffee
while
watching the morning traffic pass through downtown Harmony, such as it was
.
As she swigged a mouthful
,
a big guy with curly hair and a beard walked by on the sidewalk
outside
.
He wore a
light-colored
dress shirt with no tie and the sleeves turned up on his forearms,
black
trousers
,
and black oxford shoes. As she watched, he stepped off the curb and walked around to the driver’s side of a dusty white Dodge Ram pickup truck parked in the street just
past
the entrance
of the donut shop.
He got into the
truck
and
drove away.

Karen rushed outside but was too late to catch a glimpse of the license plate. She looked around. A young woman
and
a small girl
were
approach
ing
her on the sidewalk.

Karen flashed her ID and badge. “Excuse
me
,
did you see the man who just got into that white pickup truck?”

The woman shook her head and hurried past.

“M
a
’am?” Karen thought about following her and then changed her mind when she saw a man approach
ing
from the same direction.

“Excuse me, sir, did you see the bearded man who just got into a white pickup truck and drove away?”

“Didn’t see nothing.”

She went up and down the sidewalk, stopp
ing
several other people, but no one had seen anything or would talk to her. She was standing there with her hands on her hips, casting around for another potential witness
,
when a police cruiser pulled in to the curb, lights flashing
. T
wo cops tumbled out, weapons drawn.

“Police, freeze! Hands where we can see them!”

“Shit on a fuckin
’
stick
.
” Karen
held
up
the
wallet
containing
her badge and ID.

“Don’t you know it’s a crime to impersonate a police officer?”
demanded
the cop
whose name tag said
Brook
s
.
He was about thirty, with short brown hair and thick eyebrows.
He
snatch
ed
the
wallet
out of her hand while his partner
, whose name tag said
Louden
,
covered Karen with what she saw was a poorly-kept
Beretta 92F.
Louden was younger, with a blond brush cut and a trimmed blond mustache.

“Doesn’t seem to slo
w you boys down
much
.
”

“Button it, smartass
.
” Brooks took her ID back to the police cruiser and called it in.

A minute later he came back and returned it to her. “Our apologies, Detective Stainer. We weren’t informed of your presence in Harmony this morning.”

Karen looked at Louden, who was still
holding
his weapon. “Down, Rover. Play time’s over.”

Louden glanced at Brooks, who
shrugged
. He
holstered the Beretta.

“Deputy Chief Branham asks if you’d kindly
come with us to the station.”

“Sounds good
,” Karen said, turning away
,
“
b
ut I’ve got my own ride.”

Louden followed her across the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot of the donut shop. When he saw the car she was unlocking, he stopped short.

“That’s
your car
?”

“Y
u
p.” Karen opened the door of the Firebird
,
got in
and rolled down the window
.
Karen’s
older brother Delbert was an auto mechanic in Houston
. He
’
d bought the car
, one of the Redbird editions,
ten years ago
for three thousand dollars from a regular customer who
was
short of cash. Delbert put a thousand dollars’ worth of work into it and sold it that summer to Karen for four thousand dollars when she was visiting back home. She drove it back from Texas and had driven it every summer since, putting it in storage each winter and switching to a beat-up pickup truck.

“Wow,” Louden said, staring at her. “Hot.”

Karen looked at him.

“I
mean
the car. The car.
Is h
ot.”

Karen shook her head and
gunned the engine into life
.

Branham was walking into his office with a cup of coffee in his hand when Karen followed Broo
ks and Louden into the station.

“Come on in,” he gestured to her.

The station was busier this morning than it had been last night. A woman in a lime green dress sat at one of the desks in the central area behind the counter. She star
ed
at a computer monitor, typing industriously.
She wore a wireless headset on her right ear.
A beefy o
fficer sat at the desk closest to the metal door leading into the back
, talking on the phone
. His legs were up on the corner of his d
esk, boots sticking out
,
and he watch
ed
Karen with a bemused smile.
To her infinite disgust
,
he flexed his pectoral muscles beneath his tight uniform shirt and raised his eyebrows.

Karen
went in and sat down in the cheap wooden visitor’s chair across from Branham’s desk. “Didn’t we
just do this a
couple
hours ago?”

Branham smiled and held out his cup. “Coffee?”

“No thanks,
had some already
.
I take it you don’t have any female police officers in this town.”

“No, we don’t. Haven’t had any applicants, to date.”

“Why am I not surprised.”

“Although,” Branham went on, leaning back and sipping his coffee, “that may change before long. The local college has a pretty good criminal justice program and I’ve been told the enrollment in the last two years has been
forty
percent female. Last year was the first year we did a little recruitment thing for the seniors before graduation, and maybe we’ll get some interest from female grads
if we keep
doing it
.”

“Yeah, well, just make sure you don’t send
Hulk Hogan
out there as part of your recruiting team,” she said, hiking her thumb over her shoulder. “No woman in her right mind would want to work with that fucking hippopotamus.”

Branham laughed. “
Who, Grimes?
He’s not so bad.”

“Says you. You’re not female.”

“Glad you noticed.”

Karen leaned forward and dropped her left palm flat on top of Branham’s desk so that her engagement ring made a loud
clack
on the scratched wooden surface.

Branham
glanced at her hand and looked up into her eyes.

“Enough fun and games,”
she
said. “Where’s this
c
hief
of yours
who’s going to release Lieutenant Donaghue this morning and let us get
the hell out of here
?”

“
He
should
be in shortly
.”

Karen leaned back in the chair and looked at him evenly.
“I saw a guy this morning you need to
bring in
.
White, tall, maybe six
-
three, six
-
four, two
thirty, mid-forties, medium length wavy brown hair
,
beard, yellow shirt, black jeans, black shoes, got into a white Dodge pickup truck parked right near
the donut shop
and drove west down Bluefield.”

“That why you were bothering people on the sidewalk?”

“
Know who he is?”

“Know who
who
is?” a voice grated from the doorway.

Branham sat up straighter in his chair. “Chief, this is Homicide Detective Karen Stainer from Maryland. She works with Lieutenant Donaghue in their, uh, Major Crimes division
up there
. He contacted her with his telephone call.”

Askew shifted his weight so that he could look at Karen around the door frame. “
Thought he was calling a lawyer.
”

“
Do I look like a lawyer?
I understand your case took a major crap when your witness failed to identify the
l
ieutenant. I expect you’ll be releasing him in the next five minutes
or so
.”

“No
t likely
, missy. One witness doesn’t make or break a case.
Didn’t
they teach you that where
ver the hell it is
you come from?”

Karen leaned back and
stared
at him.
“
You know
,” she said slowly
,
as though
speaking
to an idiot,
“
when I was a little girl
we moved from Ponder to Fort Worth
. We had a little black dog, and one day
he
got loose from our front yard and ran out into the street
.
I r
a
n out after it, right into traffic.
My daddy
pulled me
out
from in front of a
truck
just
before it knocked me into next week
. Turned out it wasn’t even our
dog
. O
urs
was asleep at the foot of my mother’s bed
. I learned two things from my daddy that day. One, don’t run out into heavy traffic without looking
,
and two, if it ain’t your dog, then Jesus Christ let the damned thing go.” She stared at Askew. “You
’re chasing
the wrong dog,
pal
. Let him go.”

Askew shook his head
and
turned to Branham. “I’ll be in my office. If the
s
heriff’s
o
ffice calls, patch it through to me.
I want to talk to them.
”

“Hang on
just
a second,” Karen said, leaning forward. “We’re not done yet.
There’s
a person of interest you need to bring in.”

To his credit, Askew didn’t move and didn’t change his expression.
He continued to look at Branham.
“Well?”

“Detective Stainer saw someone in town this morning who resembled the physical description given by the eyewitness,” Branham explained. “Got into a white pickup truck and drove west on Bluefield.”

“Lotta white pickup trucks around here.”

“Tall guy with a beard.”

“Lotta guys with beard
s around here. Hillbilly heaven.
”

“We could check into it.”

“Or we could stick with the tall guy with a beard who’s sitting on his ass in our cell as we speak,” Askew said. “I’ll be in my office.” He pushed away from the door frame.

“Wait a sec, Chief,” Branham said. “I
just thought of
somebody might fit the description. You know that guy who’s in charge of the monastery at
Burkes
Garden?
What’s his name again?”

Askew frowned. “The monastery? You mean the guru fellow there
?
”

“Yeah. What’s his name again?”

“Brother something,” Askew said.

“Cook?” Branham offered.

“Baker,” Askew said. “Brother Baker. Brother
Charles
Baker
.”