Murder! (Parker & Knight Book 1)

MURDER!

BY

DONALD WELLS

Title Page

Also By Donald Wells

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About The Author

COPYRIGHT

Further Reading: Homicide!

About the Author

D
etective Rick Parker looked down at the tile floor and thought one word.

Murder!

He was on the fifth floor of a recently built office complex in the company of his wife and was about to sit around with a group of strangers and discuss the details of his personal life.

Murder, pure murder,

Relational Group Therapy for Couples is what they called it, but Parker thought that he’d rather be in a dark alley facing a loaded gun.

He was seated in a semi-circle of people with his wife at his right, and they were one of four couples. The doctor, a psychiatrist named Arnie Stahl, sat at the front facing the group. Parker saw that there were still two empty seats and he guessed that there would be another couple joining the group. It was July and the air-conditioning was at full blast to fight off the outside temperatures, which for the last few days had been hovering in the mid-nineties.

Despite the heat, Parker wore a blue summer-weight sport coat. It hid the gun on his belt, and he never went without one if he could help it. 

The Couples Therapist, Doctor Stahl, looked every bit of what he was. Stahl was fifty-four, of average height and size with sympathetic brown eyes and thinning brown hair. His wire rim glasses sparkled beneath the harsh glare of the fluorescent lighting, and the beige carpet made his complexion look even paler than usual.

Parker also looked every bit of what he was, a cop.

No one ever took the large man for anything other than a cop and it was a source of frustration to him when he was a young officer in Philadelphia, because back then all he wanted to do was work undercover narcotics.

He grew his raven hair long, added a beard and dressed, “street” and still he looked more like a cop than the veterans at his precinct.

The problem was his eyes. He had always, and would always have a cop’s watchful, stony gaze and there wasn’t a thing to be done about it, although, someone once quipped that he could don dark glasses and go undercover as a blind drug dealer. The quip did not amuse Parker.

Now, at forty, Philadelphia and thoughts of going undercover were long behind him. He was a detective on the Washington New Jersey Police Force and had grown to love the town, a town that was quickly on its way to becoming a city.

The town had been a sleepy little place until 9/11, but in the aftermath of those tragic events a native son, Bart Bennett, returned to town from Manhattan, and within three years he had converted his family’s farm into a corporate campus, and had built a new factory on land that had been the old town dump.

Soon, farm after farm was being sold off so that new apartment complexes and single-family homes could be built, and what had been a population of several thousand multiplied quickly.

As always, more people meant more problems, and sometimes those problems were of a criminal nature, and so the town began hiring more cops.

Parker saw it as an opportunity to leave Philadelphia, a city he had grown disenchanted with, and start fresh in New Jersey. The Washington force jumped at the chance to hire him and when the town had its first murder in over thirty years, it was Rick Parker who was chosen to investigate it.

Parker solved that case and the three that have happened since and now he was technically the lone homicide detective on the Washington Police Force, although, his regular duties were of the more mundane variety. There was also a search on for another cop with Parker’s experience, and several candidates had applied and been interviewed.

His wife, Rachel, gave his big hand a squeeze and Parker took his eyes from the carpet and looked into hers.

“I appreciate you doing this. I know it’s not easy for you,” she said.

Rachel Parker was ten years younger than her husband. A petite blonde with turquoise eyes and a wide smile, it was Rachel who broke the marriage vows when she had an affair earlier in the year.

When Parker discovered the betrayal, it wounded him to his core, but he loved his wife, eventually forgave her, and told her that he would do anything to heal their marriage.

Rachel had categorized the affair as a, “stupid mistake” and the two of them entered couples’ therapy with Dr. Stahl. That was over six months ago, six months of sessions that revealed Rachel’s neediness and Parker’s bent toward autonomy.

Rachel worked as a nurse, an RN, and did the food shopping, but that was the extent of her contribution to the household, and while he knew every detail about her job and the people she worked with, he never spoke of anything work related and relaxed by taking long runs or woodworking in the basement.

Rachel complained that Parker never opened up to her about his feelings while Parker revealed that he sometimes felt more like Rachel’s father than her husband, because he handled everything in their marriage, from finances to planning vacations, everything fell on his shoulders.

Those revelations and insights came hard, and now Dr. Stahl wanted them to sit in a room of strangers and speak about private pain. Parker would do it. If it meant saving his marriage he would do it, because he knew one thing above all others, he loved his wife.

Parker stared into Rachel’s eyes.

“Easy or hard, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, you know?”

Rachel smiled. “I know.”

The room they sat in was rectangular with the wallboard painted a soothing blue, but there was a glass door that led to the hallway, and when Parker looked through it and saw who was walking their way, his eyes turned to slits.

“What the hell is he doing here?”

Rachel followed his gaze and gasped. “Oh no,”

Walking towards the therapy room was the man Rachel had her affair with, Timothy Hearn. At twenty-eight, Hearn was even younger than Rachel and his beach boy good looks and brilliant blue eyes attracted more women than Parker’s handsome, but stony, face ever would.

Hearn’s income also dwarfed Parker’s as his family had deep roots in the area and owned several businesses.

Walking beside Hearn was his wife, Emily; it was Emily who had made Parker aware of his wife’s infidelity, and he knew that she hated Rachel.

Hearn opened the door, stepped in behind his wife, and then looked shocked as he spotted Rachel.

Emily Hearn pointed at Rachel. She was a dark-haired beauty with a slim, but shapely figure.

“What is your whore doing here?”

Hearn looked flabbergasted, and Parker was relieved to see that Rachel did as well; apparently, neither knew that the other would be present.

Dr. Stahl shot up from his chair and went to Emily.

“Mrs. Hearn, Emily, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? I come here to save my marriage and I find my husband’s whore staring at me, that’s what’s
wrong
.”

Parker winced at Emily’s use of the word, whore, but understood the bitterness behind it. He had thought of Hearn in far less flattering terms and was currently fighting the impulse to punch the man in the face, as he had when he found out about the affair.

Dr. Stahl’s head was swiveling back and forth between Rachel and Timothy Hearn as a sickening realization came upon him.

“Oh God, are you telling me that Rachel is the woman your husband had the affair with?”

“Affair? It wasn’t an affair. They fucked, doctor, they snuck off whenever they could and they fucked. Why the hell is that bitch here?”

The doctor looked as if he wanted to cry as he answered.

“I apologize deeply. This is a terrible twist of fate and nothing more, you see, I’ve been treating both you and your husband and the Parkers over the last few months, but because you’ve only used first names I—oh no, there’s no excuse for this and all four of you have my sincere apology.”

“You scheduled us in the same group?” Rachel said.

“Yes.” Stahl nodded. “As I said, it’s all just a terrible twist of fate, but I’ll rectify it. There are other groups that I can suggest.”

Emily looked up at her husband.

“You knew this bitch would be here, didn’t you?”

Hearn jerked his eyes from Rachel. He had been staring at her when his wife spoke.

“No... no, I, I didn’t know. Like the doctor said, a twist of fate,”

When Hearn stopped talking, he went back to staring at Rachel.

“How have you been? You look good.”

Parker stepped in front of Rachel, blocking Hearn’s view.

“Take your wife and head for the elevator, now.”

Hearn laughed.

“Is that an order, Officer? You know you’re lucky that Rachel talked me out of filing assault charges against you.”

Parker stepped closer.

“Leave now, or I just might press my luck.”

“Is that a threat?”

Parker reached out and grabbed a fistful of Hearn’s shirt, but Rachel clutched his wrist.

“Let him go, Rick. He hasn’t done anything, like the doctor said, this is all a big mistake.”

“Whore!” Emily shouted, practically screaming the word into Rachel’s ear.

Parker let go of Hearn and guided Rachel away from the woman.

“Just leave, the two of you,”

Dr. Stahl began herding Emily toward the door.

“Yes, please leave, I’ll call later and we’ll discuss our options.”

Emily went out into the hall in a huff, but Hearn turned in the doorway to stare back at Rachel.

“You look good, very good,”

Parker went for him, but Dr. Stahl got between them and slammed the door on Hearn.

Parker turned around to find the other three couples in the room staring at him, but when he looked at his wife, he saw that her eyes were gazing through the glass door, watching Hearn’s departure.

Four days later, he came home to find a note telling him that she had run off with Timothy Hearn.

S
ix weeks later.

––––––––

T
he girl laying on her side atop the entryway floor was dead, but there was little blood and Parker thought that the murder must have taken place very recently.

The girl, woman actually, given that the ID in her purse gave her age as nineteen, and it also told him that her address was the house next door.

Her name was Tiffany Grace, and she had bled from a wound on her left side, but because of the sparse amount of blood, Parker suspected that the murder weapon had pierced her heart, ending her life, and stopping the flow of blood.

The girl was a looker,
Parker thought.

Tiffany Grace had been five-foot-three and weighed 112 lbs. The blond hair looked natural and her wide-opened eyes were still blue, although there was no sheen upon them. They looked like the dusty eyes of a doll whose owner had outgrown her.

Tiffany had been wearing white cotton shorts and the contrast with her tanned flesh was stark, even in death. Her halter top was an emerald green that left her flat stomach bare, lying down as she was, her breasts had slid nearly free of the fabric and above her left nipple was the tiny tattoo of a heart .

The colors were vibrant and the tattoo looked new, but then, the girl had been vibrant and new.

Parker turned to the crime scene photographer who was also the coroner’s assistant, a young, black woman named Stella Harvey.

“I’ll need a close-up of that tattoo on her breast, and any other ones you guys find.”

Stella nodded, and Parker thought that she looked shaken.

“You okay, Stella?”

“Yeah, it’s just that she looks like a friend of mine. It’s not her, and she’s younger than my friend, but the resemblance... it’s a little creepy.”