Sophie's Last Stand

“Darlene.” Joe’s tone was ominous. “Enough.”

I had no idea what kinds of questions would be answered for Darlene if she knew that, and I didn’t want to know, either. Somehow, though, I was sure we hadn’t heard the end of it from her. As soon as Gray Evans hit the doorstep, Darlene would be on him, relentless with her need to know. Let her tell Gray she was a professional therapist and see what that got her. I was betting he’d brush her off like a speck of dust.

Joe didn’t want to see any more. He started wandering around the kitchen, inspecting the wiring, looking at the pipes that were poking out of the subflooring, waiting for their sink.

“What’s the plan here?” he asked, indicating the entire room and all the details.

I sighed and pulled myself away from the window, turning my back on Gray Evans and the dead girl.

My dream house was a shamble of renovations and un-checked deterioration. What had been advertised as “partially renovated” was actually the equivalent of saying “We’ve stopped the bleeding, now you can try and put the pieces back together.” The major systems, the heat and air, the electrical wiring, had been replaced, but the lathe in some rooms lay naked and exposed, while a few others had new Sheetrock, unprimed and unpainted, waiting like empty canvases.

I’d moved in anyway. I’d made the offer, closed quickly and hauled my belongings from Philly to New Bern before I could have regrets, before I could change my mind. Did it matter that the kitchen was basically a gutted shell? No. That’s why God made microwaves.

Did I care that my bedroom was the intended dining room, while the master bedroom was yet to be reclaimed from years of neglect and trash? Absolutely not—it beat living with Ma and Pa and knowing that no matter what I did, it wouldn’t be right by their standards. Parenting to Ma is like redoing an old house; you don’t ever declare it done because there is always room for improvement.

“The plan is to finish the walls first,” I told Joe. I was attempting to go along with his distraction, but the scene in the backyard tugged at me and I found myself looking over my shoulder. “I can’t afford plaster. Besides, the owners who started the work were using Sheetrock anyway, so that’ll come next, then the floors. I’m going to refinish what I can and try to match up the rest with new wood.”

Joe nodded. “Wood everywhere then?” he asked, but his eyes followed my gaze into the backyard.

“Yeah. I want to keep the house as close to original as possible. Maybe not the fixtures so much, maybe reproductions there, but you know, an old-timey feel.”

“Here he comes,” said Darlene, and no one had to ask who.

Joe walked to the back door and pulled it open. Darlene looked over at me and smirked, as if this was a social call and not a death scene investigation. I was once again frozen, standing rooted to the middle of my kitchen floor like a big dummy.

Gray was peeling off his gloves as he stepped onto the enclosed porch, stuffing them in his pockets and talking to Joe in a low voice. When they entered the kitchen, Joe looked at Darlene and said, “Come on.”

“But I want to—”

“Come on, Darlene.” Joe wasn’t giving her an option. As she approached the two men, he reached out, grabbed her arm and pulled her out the door. Darlene let out a high-pitched squawk and was gone without further ado. That left me alone with Detective Evans.

“Wish I had that lemonade now,” he said, his voice soft and easy.

“I’ve got bottled water,” I said, flying into a fluster of activity, opening cabinet doors, overlooking the cooler on the counter and finally realizing it was right in front of me.

Gray Evans moved across the room, took the cooler lid from my hand and set it down on the counter. Then he took the dripping water bottle that I handed him and put that down, too. He was inches away from me, so close I could feel the heat that radiated from his body, and smell the scent of musk.

“You know, it’s all right,” he said. The words brushed against me like a quiet breeze. “It’s all right to be scared and upset. Just try to relax a little bit, okay?”

I nodded and swallowed hard.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” I said.

That brought a smile. “Me, either.”

“You never found a dead body?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I get called in after the body’s been found. I know what to expect. It’s not a shock when I show up—not like it was for you.”

I looked away and turned my attention to fitting the lid onto the cooler.

“I…it was so…she was… When that blade hit her and I looked down and saw her arm, I thought, my God, she was sleeping here and I killed her.”

Gray was watching me, the water bottle unopened in his hand. “She was probably dead maybe six hours before you found her,” he said. He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a long drink.

“How did she die?”

Gray shook his head. “We won’t be certain until the medical examiner finishes, and it might take the autopsy to tell for sure. I’m pretty certain she’s got a head trauma, though.”

“Was it accidental or do you think she was murdered?”

“Almost certainly foul play,” he answered.

Right outside my window, just behind my house, a woman had been killed and then dumped. I hadn’t heard a thing. I’d slept through someone’s violent death and never even imagined it. I’d stood in my kitchen, drinking my morning coffee and looking out at the backyard, without any awareness at all.

“Do you know who she is yet?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Probably a crack whore, at least from the way she’s dressed, but with that hair, I don’t know.”

“Hey, maybe she worked a particular kind of clientele,” I said. “You know, the whips and chains, ‘I’ve been a bad, bad boy’ set.”

That made him smile. “You’re Joe’s sister, all right.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He’s quick, always got a comeback or the last word on a situation. And you look like him.” He hesitated, and then added, “Not the hair part. It’s your eyes. You’ve got eyes like his.”

“So, if Joe had hair, we’d be twins? Because I think what you’re really trying to say is I’ve got a mouth.”

He was looking at me, at first laughing a little, and then studying me. “Not really, not the twins part. But yeah,” he said, his voice thickening, “that’s some mouth you got there.” The way he said it, he could’ve been kissing me and I wouldn’t have felt the connection any stronger.

I backed up and changed the subject. Gray Evans scared me. He didn’t seem to know about women needing men like fish needed bicycles. I had the feeling that if I’d told him, he wouldn’t have cared, either. The guy was a player and spreading chemistry like fertilizer. Oh, this was one to stay away from, all right. But that wouldn’t be my problem for long. Right now he still didn’t know about me, about Nick. Later, his attitude would change and it would be a whole new ball game. He wasn’t going to ever be my problem.

“Okay,” he said, as if reading me. “Here’s what will happen next. The forensics people will finish processing the scene, and we’ll get the body out of here. When it’s all done, the yard will be yours again and you won’t have to worry about having any restrictions on working back there.”

“What if there’s another body?”

“We checked. There’s not. What probably happened is that she was killed nearby and your yard was convenient because of the overgrowth and the low fence. It was easy, that’s all.”

“I’ll finish clearing it out tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of this happening again. I don’t like this at all.”

“Hey, the chances of it happening again are incredibly small. We don’t have that many homicides here, maybe four a year. This was a fluke. Relax.” He looked out the window into the backyard, inspecting it carefully. “Are you doing all that by yourself? Nobody’s helping you? What’s with that sorry brother of yours?”

I smiled despite my stomach flipping over and my heart racing, despite the warmth that seemed to be spreading throughout my body in a long-ago remembered way. Oh man, this guy was trouble.

“Joe helps when he can,” I said, “but he’s got a family and work….”

“And you don’t?” Gray asked. His eyes were fastened on my face as if everything hung on my answer.