Admit One (14 page)

Will could only blink. “Your iPhone.”

“Told you I wasn’t senile, didn’t I?”

“Yes ma’am, you certainly did. Would you mind if we had a look at those videos as well?”

She frowned. “You’re not going to take my phone away, are you?”

“No ma’am. Not unless we should have to enter the videos as evidence for some reason, in which case we would make sure that we got your phone back to you as soon as possible. Um, Tolliver?”

“Yes sir?”

“Contact Officer Bascomb and tell her she’s needed, please. Officer Bascomb should be here shortly, and she’ll take a look at your notebook and your videos, Ms. Bushnell.”

“Something wrong with your vision?”

Will’s lip twitched. “No ma’am. But I have a warrant to search the apartment next door, and despite your assurances regarding your neighbor’s whereabouts, protocol – not to mention common sense – dictates that I have backup, which is why I brought along Officer Tolliver.” And he thought it was prudent to have someone take a look at those videos immediately, before she could change her mind. They might be useful, they might not, but at this point any information they could get regarding Jimmy Owen’s patterns over the last several weeks was worth examining.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you want with him?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

She sniffed. “Well, whatever it is, I hope you lock him up and toss out the key so that I can get a decent night’s sleep. I’m too old for this nonsense.”

After they’d gotten the old woman situated with Officer Bascomb and the building super let them in to Owen’s apartment, Will and Tolliver swept it to make certain that it was indeed empty.

“Clear,” Tolliver said, stepping out of the bathroom. He holstered his weapon and looked around at the chaos. “Either this guy is a slob, or he left here in a big hurry.”

“Or both,” Will said, eyeing the bathroom with distaste. A lone bottle of shampoo sat in the corner of the shower, but aside from a dirty towel tossed on the floor, no other grooming accessories were in evidence. Will’d been hoping for a brush or a toothbrush, but the medicine cabinet contained nothing but a bottle of Tums – all that fast food, probably – and a box of condoms. At least the man was conscientious about something
.

He turned to look at the unmade bed, the open dresser drawers, a few of which were empty. The closet was in similar disarray, with several shirts hanging half off their hangars or dropped on the floor as if someone had rifled through them, grabbing what they could perhaps stuff in a duffle bag.

The kitchen looked like the domain of the stereotypical single male. Several empty takeout bags and a pizza box stuffed into the trash can, but nary a pot nor a pan in evidence. Apparently cooking also wasn’t among Mr. Owen’s domestic skill set. There weren’t even any dirty plates or utensils in the sink. Will guessed the only food the man believed in was the kind you could eat with your hands. There was a half full bottle of soda in the fridge – still fizzy, Will discovered upon investigation. The cardboard tag around the bottle neck indicated it had come from the same establishment that delivered the pizza. Apart from some bags of chips and an empty Pop-Tart box in one of the cupboards, there was no food to be found. If they could get a look at the man’s phone, Will would bet he had every delivery place around on speed dial.

The living area was basically empty except for a lone sock poking out from beneath the sofa.

And an empty beer bottle on the coffee table. Bingo.

“You think that’ll do it?” Tolliver asked, nodding toward the bottle.

“Well, his fingerprints are on file, so provided they match up with the ones on the bottle, we should be able to get a DNA sample for comparison.” Not that Will harbored much doubt. What were the odds of two men in Sweetwater with the same tattoo in the same spot on the same arm? But they had to be sure.

Will pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and dropped the beer bottle inside.

“Nice TV,” Tolliver commented while Will wrote on the bag with indelible marker. “My brother-in-law has one like this. And the old lady is right. It does have a great sound system.”

“I don’t think that particular feature would rate very high with Ms. Bushnell.” Will glanced at the source – or one of them, anyway – of Imogene’s ire. He’d checked into Owen’s finances after the kid had posted his own bail, and he’d dug deeper while he was waiting for the warrant. Owen’s credit was in the crapper and his bank account balance extremely modest, but he’d somehow managed not only to post bail but to acquire a number of new toys over the past several months, which he’d paid for with cash.

Where he’d gotten that cash was the question.

Jimmy Owen had no discernible means of employment, wasn’t part of any official government welfare program – at least under his rightful name – and had no family in town apart from a cousin, who’d conveniently scuttled into hiding like a cockroach caught in the light.

Not that he couldn’t have another source of legitimate income – a generous grandma, a winning lottery ticket, or maybe he’d found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But given what information Will had gleaned so far, he wasn’t betting on it. 

Will glanced around. He didn’t think they’d learn anything else from the apartment. Given the fact that Owen was out on bail awaiting trial for Tommy’s assault, it wasn’t out of the question that he would skip town.

But that still didn’t explain how Owen’s severed arm had ended up washing onto the shore of the Sweetwater River. Unless he’d planned to leave town by boat and had experienced some sort of accident.

But if that were the case, where was the damn boat? Or his ‘infernal’ motorcycle, for that matter?

“Chief?”

He turned toward the sound of Bascomb’s voice to see her framed in the open door of the apartment.

“I think you need to take a look at these videos.”

Will nodded. “Go ahead and bag that soda bottle, too,” he said to Tolliver, just to be on the safe side. Will hadn’t noticed any dirty glasses in the sink, so maybe the man had drunk straight from the bottle. Clearly he hadn’t had a Josie in his formative years to curb him of any less than mannerly tendencies.

“What do we have?” he said as he approached Bascomb.

“Aside from one very crotchety senior citizen?” she muttered, and Will’s lips twitched again. He kind of liked the old gal, to be honest. “Several surprisingly clear videos. For her age, she’s got a steady hand. Watch these clips and tell me if you notice anything.”

Will played the videos, which showed the nocturnal movements of Jimmy Owen, accompanied by commentary in Imogene Bushnell’s creaky voice reiterating the date, time, location and a few pithy observations as to her neighbor’s character. 

Will played the videos again, muting the sound so as not to be distracted. The last video showed Owen leaving his apartment – the old woman must have slept all day if she sat awake at night just waiting to catch Owen coming and going – with a duffle bag over his shoulder.  According to Ms. Bushnell, that was the last time he’d been home, and the timeline fit. Although they couldn’t pin down
exactly
how long the arm had been in the river before washing ashore, the estimation given by the medical examiner made it safe to say that Owen suffered his
accident
that same night.

But he didn’t think that’s what Bascomb was getting at.  

“One of these things is not like the others,” he said, glancing up at Bascomb.

She nodded. “He’s wearing a helmet, both into and out of his apartment that last night. He wasn’t wearing one – or even carrying one – in any of the other videos. He could have simply been in a hurry. Didn’t want to take the time to remove the helmet, left it with the bike. I asked Ms. Bushnell if she could recall whether or not she’d ever seen him with a helmet, and she couldn’t confirm with any certainty that she had. She suggested that his head was too big to fit into one,” she added with a wry smile.

“We need to see if we can increase the resolution, have a look at those last few videos frame by frame.” Will sighed. “Ms. Bushnell isn’t going to be very happy, but we’re going to have to take her phone for a little while. Let me know if she balks, and I’ll come talk to her.”

“You got it.”

Bascomb left to deal with the crotchety Imogene Bushnell, and Will turned to see Tolliver standing just outside the kitchen area, the bagged soda bottle clutched in one gloved hand and something dangling from a finger of the other. “What’s that?”

“A key,” Tolliver said, his normally passive expression showing considerable animation. “I went through the cabinets one more time, just to be thorough, and I accidentally dropped a bag of chips on the floor. This spilled out.”

“Well that’s a unique place to store your spare key, to be certain. Let’s see if it fits the front door.” Will took the key, which was tied to a black ribbon, and inserted it into the lock. It didn’t budge.

“Doesn’t look like the right kind of key for a motorcycle,” Tolliver pointed out.

“No it doesn’t.” Will tossed the key on his palm, considering. “Let’s bag it,” he said. “It might… wait. Hell.”

“What is it?”

Maybe nothing, though Will had been doing this job long enough to be highly skeptical of coincidence. “This ribbon,” he said, glancing up at Tolliver. There were probably millions of yards just like it in craft stores all over the country, he reminded his gut. But his gut didn’t buy it.

“It looks just like the one we found near Eugene Hawbaker’s grave.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ALLIE
turned the key again, hoping against hope, but since the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, she finally accepted that her car’s battery was dead.

“Crap,” she muttered, slumping back against the leather seat. She loved her Jag, mostly for sentimental reasons – it had been a gift from her father upon her college graduation – but reliable wasn’t the first descriptive word that came to mind. She wasn’t about to get rid of it, though. Not only because it reminded her of her father when things had been good, but also because she couldn’t afford to buy a new car right now. The business was doing well, and they’d managed to pay most of the debts incurred when Harlan bet the family fortune on a development deal that went bad, but things were still a little tight. Especially if they needed to find a care home for their father. He had his judge’s pension, of course, but the prices on the private facilities she’d checked into were eye-opening, to say the least. Not to mention the renovations still needed at the theater, and all of the upkeep involved with living in a historic – read:
old –
house. All things considered, a new car would have to wait.

She peered dejectedly through the windshield. The night was black around her, the Dust Jacket’s back porch light failing to fully dispel the shadows at the back end of the parking lot. Spanish moss hung still and lifeless, the moonlight silvering the plants in Sarah’s garden with an almost unearthly glow. The night seemed to be… waiting. Great atmosphere for a candle-lit walking tour, but not something she particularly welcomed when she was alone.

Which was silly. Sarah and Tucker were right next door, of course – although she’d seen the master bedroom light click off when she was waving goodbye to the last of her tour group, so she figured they were probably
occupied
currently. They tended to be occupied a lot.

And hadn’t she just delighted, however secretly, in spooking a group of tourists with stories about some of the local things that go bump in the night? She wasn’t a scaredy-cat.

Usually.

But one of the people on the tour had asked about the severed arm which had washed up – there’d been a story about it in the paper – and that had led to wild speculations about serial killers and ritual sacrifices and angry, bloodthirsty spirits roaming the Low Country in search of revenge.

Personally, Allie thought it was her tour group which had shown signs of being bloodthirsty, but the conversation, while she’d laughed it off at the time, disturbed her. She hadn’t really talked to Mason about it – and she knew better than to ask Will – but the image of a bloody, mangled arm clutched in the jaws of Tucker’s admittedly sweet but enormous dog was stuck in her mind like a pebble in a shoe. 

A particularly gruesome pebble.

Allie sighed. She could sleep in the car, go back inside and call a cab, or walk the few blocks to the theater, where she could borrow Bran’s car to drive home. He could always get a ride with one of the cast.

She hadn’t intended to go anywhere near the theater tonight, but suddenly she felt the urge for people and lights and action. Maybe it would dispel the image of the severed arm that wanted to linger in her head.

Grabbing her bag and strapping it across her body, Allison locked up the car. Someone could give her a jump in the morning. Squaring her shoulders, she headed toward the sidewalk with determined steps. Who cared if it was dark, and relatively deserted? She’d just walked all over town for the past two hours, hadn’t she? There was no reason to turn chicken now.

She could hear music and the distant murmur of voices from the direction of the Tavern, tempting her to head that way even though it was the long way to the theater.