Page 19 of Dirty Weekend

That was easier said than done. Jack’s phone went off the entire half hour we tried to shovel down food. The guy who’d been set on fire had died at the hospital, so Cole now had a homicide on his hands. Though it didn’t look like it would be too terribly hard to solve as there’d been witnesses to the crime.

The calls for the night were just starting to come in. Several assaults, an attempted robbery at the convenience store, several calls of people trapped in rising water because they’d ignored the barricades that had been set out, and a guy threatening to jump off the Memorial Bridge into the Potomac.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m anxious to get back to the lab and look at Hargrove’s skull. It’s nothing short of a miracle that there was enough adjacent skull to piece together to see the fracturing.”

“And maybe while we’re at it we can figure out who stabbed Cami Downey thirteen times and tossed her in the river.”

It took us less time than I thought it would to navigate to the James Madison Bridge and King George Proper. The high waters weren’t as bad around the university since they’d built in drainage systems, so we didn’t have to make any detours.

“I’m not a parent,” I said.

“Yet,” Jack interjected.

“But I would never let my kid live in a place like this,” I said. “No matter how old they were.”

“Yeah,” he said. “This is a hotspot area we keep on the radar. We’ve had trouble with vagrants and drugs being sold under the bridge. We raided a flophouse not too far from here.”

“Geez,” I said. “We’ve never had that kind of trouble in King George before.”

“The price of progress,” he said. “People move from DC to get out of DC, only they’re bringing DC problems with them because they still want what they had in the city. The more developers move in, the more problems we’ll have.”

“Which is why we’re not selling all the Lawson land.”

“You do pay attention when I’m boring you with business stuff,” he said, smiling.

Jack came from a long line of tobacco farmers. He’d inherited the land, properties, and a ridiculous amount of money from his grandparents when he’d turned twenty-five. Tobacco farming wasn’t what it used to be, so as other farms had gone belly up, Jack had bought up their property so they wouldn’t sell to developers. He’d started growing organic cotton and soybeans, and a couple of the pastures he used for grain fed chickens and cattle.

As far as the locals were concerned, Jack was a hero. He’d kept jobs intact and kept industries going that otherwise would’ve died out. Not to mention he’d kept the big city developers at bay. At least for now.

“Of course I do,” I said. “You told me I needed to pay attention in case something happens to you and I end up running the Lawson estate. And then I told you I didn’t want to talk about a future without you, so you promised I could have a dog. Which I still don’t have, by the way, but I have lots of pictures on my Pinterest board.”

“I think we got off track,” Jack said, his smile tight. “Let’s see what we can find out about Cami Downey.”

“I’m not going to forget about the dog,” I said. “I want a big dog. But one that’s soft and will sit in my lap.”

“You’ve given this much more thought than I’m comfortable with,” he said.

“A promise is a promise,” I said. “You still have trauma from when Barbara died. And I still don’t understand why you named your dog Barbara.”

“Because I was five and I named her after my grandmother because she was my hero,” he said. “And I don’t want to talk about Barbara.”

“Because you’re still traumatized from her death. She was seventeen years old when she died. That’s one hundred and nineteen in dog years. It was time for her to go.”

“Maybe we could table this for later,” he said.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “I’m going to name our dog Sherlock. He’ll be a great detective dog.”

I saw Jack roll his eyes, but I decided to ignore it. I’d get my dog. Mostly because I’d never had one before. I hadn’t had a regular childhood, and I’d always resented the fact that my parents would never let me have one. In hindsight, they probably hadn’t wanted a dog to sniff out bodies they’d stashed in their underground bunker at the house or anything else that might lead the cops to their door.

The rain and gloom somehow made the area seem more sinister than it was in daylight. Streetlights flickered or were out completely, making it nearly impossible to see what lurked under the overpass. Jack turned his lights on and two cars that had been parked took off in opposite directions.

The city had made an attempt to revitalize the area since it was only a few blocks from campus, but so far the newly built conference center looked like a fish out of water among an old apartment complex, a bail bondsman, pawn shop, and a three-story building with grimy brick and bars on the first-floor windows.

Jack parked in front of the three-story building, and the neon sign from the pawn shop flashed eerily over Jack’s truck.

“This is where our victim lived?” I asked.

“I’m guessing they don’t make much as law clerks, so the rent is cheap, and it’s convenient to jump on the highway to get into DC quickly. But yeah, seems like there would be better options for two young women. I’ve got deputies and CSI on the way. They’re about fifteen minutes out.”

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