“I didn’t forget. I was busy.” I watched him work through his own tacos. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Breakfast.”
“And you’re lecturing me?”
“I was stuck in the council meeting from hell all afternoon,” he said. “I would have gladly escaped if I could have to eat.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Are you going to tell me what you found?”
I started on my second taco. “Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Small caliber, .22, close range. I recovered the round. It’s on its way to Richmond for ballistics.”
Jack nodded, his jaw tightening.
“He was tortured for two to three days before they killed him. The bruises and burns were in different stages of healing.” I took another bite, chewed, swallowed. “I also found Klonopin in his system. It’s an anti-seizure medication.”
“Seizures?”
“With the amount of old head trauma I found—I’m talking years of it—It’s not surprising. Repeated blows to the head cause cumulative brain damage. Seizures are one of the consequences.” I wiped my fingers on a napkin. “But here’s the thing. The levels were therapeutic. Normal. He was taking his medication exactly the way he was supposed to.”
“So nobody slipped him anything.”
“No. Whoever grabbed him did it the hard way.” I crumpled my taco wrapper. “Which makes me wonder what else we don’t know about this kid’s life.”
“His mother’s name is Loretta Washington. She lives over on Maple Court, in the Riverside apartments. Cole ran the background while you were doing the autopsy. She’s a nurse’s aide at the hospital, been there twenty years. Andre was her only child.”
Her only child. And now we were about to knock on her door and tell her he was dead.
But even as the dread of the notification settled over me, something else nagged at the back of my mind. Construction workers didn’t get executed. They didn’t get held for days and tortured. Whatever had put him on that killer’s radar, it wasn’t framing houses and pouring concrete.
The Riverside apartments were a cluster of two-story brick buildings on the east side of King George Proper. It was a place where working people lived paycheck to paycheck and kept their heads down. Close to the naval base, close to the hospital where Loretta worked her shifts. The parking lot was half full at this hour, sedans and pickup trucks baking in the late afternoon sun. A group of kids kicked a soccer ball around on a patch of brown grass, their laughter carrying on the humid air.
Jack parked near building C and killed the engine. Neither of us moved for a moment.
“I hate this part,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“It never gets easier.”
“It’s not supposed to.” I reached over and took his hand. “That’s how you know you’re still human.”
He squeezed my fingers, then let go and opened his door. “Let’s get it done.”
Loretta Washington lived in apartment 2B, up a flight of concrete stairs with a wrought-iron railing that had seen better days. The door was painted a cheerful blue, and a welcome mat with sunflowers sat on the landing. A wind chime made of sea glass tinkled softly in the breeze.
Jack knocked. We waited.
The woman who opened the door was in her early fifties, with gray threading through dark hair she wore pulled back in a neat bun. She was still in her scrubs—pale blue, decorated with cartoon cats—and her eyes were tired but kind. The kind of tired that came from long shifts and longer worries.
Those eyes went from Jack’s badge to my lanyard and back again, and something in her face shifted. She knew. Before we said a word, she knew.
“No,” she said softly. “No, please.”
“Mrs. Washington?” Jack’s voice was gentle. “I’m Sheriff Jack Lawson. This is Dr. J.J. Graves, the county coroner. May we come in?”
Her hand flew to her mouth. She stumbled back from the door, and Jack caught her elbow, steadying her.
