Biloxi Sunrise (The Biloxi Series Book 1) Read online

  So, he had been paying attention when she was pointing out what she saw on the body earlier. Kate tried to hide her surprise. “I’d say that’s a good assumption. It looks like she was abused both before and after she died.” She glanced back at the body. Her gaze jumped from old bruises to new ones and scanned the numerous stab wounds.

  “There was a lot of rage and hatred in whoever did this. I didn’t count the wounds, because I can’t see what’s on her back, but I’d say there are more than thirty.”

  Stabbing might be a method used by someone desperate for money, but the number of stab wounds on this woman were far too many to have been made by someone simply trying to steal her purse or jewelry. And the purse was still there, with money in it. The only thing that seemed to be missing was the wallet. Obviously, there was much more than a robbery going on here.

  Still holding the card between his fingers, Jack started back toward the pier at the top of the rocks.

  “Where are you going?” She didn’t even try to disguise the surprise in her voice. Jack was really getting on her nerves with all his strange behavior.

  “I’m going to talk to Dana. See if she knows who this girl is and who was abusing her.” He bagged the business card in a plastic zipper bag and signed it through the on-scene chain of custody.

  Dana.

  Kate gritted her teeth. So, Jack was on a first name basis with the counselor?

  “You want me to go with you?” She hated the uncertainty that rang in her voice, especially since anger added to the heat that was already strangling her. It wasn’t like Jack to take off without her. And it wasn’t like him to make her ask what was next. They’d always worked well together, but at this moment it felt more like they were new partners than it had when they were new partners.

  “Nope.” Jack didn’t look over his shoulder as he walked back toward his car.

  “No problem. I’ll just wrap things up here.” Kate intended the sarcasm to be audible and to hide her hurt and confusion. What was going on with Jack? Had he finally found out she’d gotten her last partner killed? Was that what kept him so far away that she didn’t feel like she could reach him? Was that what made him rush away at the first opportunity?

  FOUR

  With one hand on the steering wheel, Jack weaved through traffic on Highway 90. With the other hand, he pushed his Bluetooth earpiece in place and dialed Dana McNally’s office. The phone rang through and the muscles in his jaw popped as he gritted his teeth. Kate hadn’t sounded happy as he left, but he would have to deal with that later.

  The ringing stopped and a firm, professional voice replaced it. “Dana McNally’s office.”

  “Mrs. McNally, please.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “I’m sorry she’s out of the office. Can I take a message?” Dana’s secretary, Nancy, was not rude, but not friendly either. In his past dealings with her, Jack had found Nancy to be a sweet, warm person. But it was her job to protect Dana and her clients.

  “Nancy, this is Jack Roe. It’s really important that I reach her.”

  “Oh, Detective Roe, I didn’t recognize your voice.” Her voice softened, and warmth crept into it. “She called earlier and said that she was going to stop at the gym on the way in. She doesn’t have anything scheduled until after ten this morning. Do you want me to take a message? I’m sure she’ll call in soon.”

  “No, Nancy. What gym does she use? I’ll swing by there and see if I can catch her. This isn’t something that can wait.”

  She confirmed Dana’s choice of gyms and Jack tapped the off button on his headset as he cut back toward the heart of Gulfport. He drove over the speed limit, but was careful. He wanted to catch her so he wouldn’t waste time tracking her down, but he also didn’t want to get into an accident because he was in a hurry. Besides, focusing on the traffic kept his mind off his own troubles.

  *~*~*

  The lavish front desk of the workout facility could have been mistaken for the outer office of a law firm. Jack couldn’t see or hear any indication that there was actual exercise going on. He flashed his badge and explained to the receptionist that he needed to see Dana McNally. She sighed heavily as if his urgency was an affront to some personal belief but granted him entrance through a plain-looking door to the left of the desk.

  As the door swung open, the sight of the exercise machines and free weights sunk in. As the door clicked closed behind him, the slightly salty smell of sweat assaulted his nose. Something was a little off about this place, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He chased Dana’s reflection around the room from mirror to mirror then found her actual person at a weight machine designed to help its users develop strength in their arms and shoulders.

  She was covered in sweat, her eyes were focused far away, and she was so attentive to what she was doing that she didn’t see Jack as he stood close by.

  Watching her, he began to understand how Dana could carry her size so well. At five-foot-nine she was as tall as, or taller than, most men. But she didn’t look masculine in any way. She was lithe and graceful, and it was obvious that she worked hard to keep her shape.

  Being that in tune with her physical-self had to contribute to the grace with which she carried herself. Determination skewed her oval shaped face, and she struggled through a few more reps before she lowered the weights with complete control.

  She climbed off the machine, and scrubbed her face with a towel as she walked toward the locker room and ran right into Jack.

  Dana stepped back and started to say something, but the words died on her tongue as recognition lightened her features. “Jack, what are you doing here?”

  “Watching you. You really get into that.” He held his ground even though contact with her sent shocks shooting across his skin. Interesting. That hadn’t happened since long before his wife died.

  “It’s both a healthy lifestyle choice and a way to work through tensions. Sometimes I solve my toughest problems in here.” She swung her arms wide, indicating the gym that catered to elite customers. Machines clicked and soft grunts cut through the relative quiet.

  Music. That’s what was missing. Most gyms played high-energy pump music that Jack found annoying. This one did not. The only sounds were of people concentrating on their routine or quietly conversing with other members. Even loud groans born of effort and the bang and whir of weights and machines were missing. The entire gym was almost unnaturally quiet.

  Dana took a step back and broke contact with him, but she was still close enough for Jack to smell the shampoo she had last used, combined with the sweat of her efforts. The result was a scent that was sweeter than musk, but just as heady.

  “What are you really doing here?” She looked directly at him, as if her steady gaze could draw the answer directly from his soul.

  “I need to ask you about a Jane Doe we found this morning. She might have been a patient of yours.” He tried to refocus on business.

  “Oh.” Dana’s shoulders slumped a little and sorrow, then something else, flashed across her face. The emotional progression was so fast, however, that her features barely wrinkled before she was completely in control again. Surely, in her profession, to have an investigator ask you to help identify a patient or past patient must feel like failure on some level.

  “Give me a few minutes to shower and change, okay?” Her face might look like a stone mask, but a hollowness rang in her voice that hadn’t been there just a few seconds ago.

  Jack nodded and watched as she entered a locker room through swinging doors. She dropped down on a bench in front of a row of lockers and then the door swung completely shut.

  *~*~*

  Jack glanced at his watch as Dana emerged from the locker room, a duffle bag slung over her shoulder and wearing a smart business suit. Just ten minutes? Most women he knew needed hours, not minutes, to get themselves ready to go. Her short hair was still damp from the quick shower Jack assumed she’d taken, but her makeup was perfec
tly applied and she looked straight into his eyes as the door closed behind her.

  She stood tall, shoulders squared, and she held her head high. There was no trace of the emotion that he’d seen in her earlier. Without a word she walked toward the exit balancing perfectly on three inch heels.

  Jack followed closely, admiring her form. The efforts that she put forth in the gym certainly paid off. Dana McNally was not hard to look at. Not at all.

  At his car, Jack shook his head to clear his thoughts and pulled the plastic bag from the front passenger’s seat. “Your card was found in the purse of a woman that was killed at the beach last night.” Jack held it up for her to see. “The woman was found beaten and stabbed to death. I was hoping you might be able to look at this and tell me who she is.”

  Dana’s well-defined facial features remained smooth, passive. Stone. “Jack, we’re talking about violating doctor patient privilege here. Legally, I don’t know how much I can help you. I may only be a crisis counselor, but I still have a legal obligation to protect my clients.”

  “Come on, Dana. I don’t need a patient history. I just need a name. Some lead on who this woman might be. Her wallet was missing and it could take weeks to get identification if you don’t help.” Jack stared straight at her. If he broke eye contact, she might refuse, and he didn’t want to give her any chance to do that. He needed to know who this victim was.

  Dana shifted her gaze to the plastic bag. A truck rumbled by, the sound of its engine bouncing off the walls of the buildings around them. It wasn’t until the truck was gone and the noise had quieted that she finally nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Follow me to the office, and we can go from there. But I can’t make you any promises, Jack.”

  *~*~*

  Jack sat in a comfortable, overstuffed chair in Dana’s office while she walked around the large room putting her purse away, hanging up her suit jacket and gathering both her paper planner and her iPad.

  “Can’t live without this thing.” She waved the tablet as she lowered herself into an identical chair opposite Jack. She set her planner and iPad in the chair beside her and tapped the small table between them with one well-manicured nail. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Jack pulled a set of latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them in place. Then he slipped the business card out of the plastic bag and sat the bag first, then the card on top of that on the table. He turned it so Dana could read the appointment time hand written on the card and pushed it to her side of the table.

  “September fifth.” Dana started paging through her paper planner. She reached the date and sat motionless for a few seconds. Then she picked up the iPad and started tapping on the screen. After a few more minutes she laid the iPad on her lap. “I think it was Patricia Simms.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “See this?” Dana barely tapped her nail against a one-hour time slot on the calendar page that had been crossed out in red ink. “I’ve got Patricia Simms in the time slot for that hour, but she canceled. I only had one other appointment that day. And that appointment was much later in the afternoon.”

  “You can remember that?” Jack’s memory often failed him within minutes if the information wasn’t important. His co-workers always joked about the yellow sticky notes plastered around his computer and on his door frame that kept his life on course.

  He carried an iPhone, but only because Kate helped him pick it out last time he needed a new phone. He’d never taken the time to learn to use it for more than a phone. Kate was into the gadgets and technology and she’d been disappointed when he didn’t take to the new toy as she’d hoped.

  Dana chuckled. “I can’t remember two days ago, much less a week and a half ago. Like I said, I live by this thing.” She tipped the screen of the iPad forward slightly and Jack recognized brief notes scribbled across the electronic page.

  “Why’d she cancel?” Jack tried to pull the conversation back to the reason he was in Dana’s office.

  She tipped the device back toward her and tapped the screen. “According to my secretary, she had a family emergency.

  Jack shook his head. “Why was Simms seeing you?” He had an idea. Dana only worked with crisis patients, the kind that were generally abused in some way, but to know the exact situation would be useful and it might give him a lead. Dana probably wouldn’t tell him. It would be in violation of patient confidentiality, but it still never hurt to ask.

  Dana exhaled loudly and Jack looked at her, expecting frustration at his question. Her shoulders slumped and her chin dropped toward her chest. She stared at the floor for a long moment.

  “It’s probably her, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I want to make sure before I can say it positively is. But this helps.” Jack pulled the card back toward himself using the corner of the plastic bag.

  Dana sighed again. “Sometimes I hate what I do.”

  Jack nodded in agreement. Some days he felt the same way. Especially when kids were involved in cases or when criminals were released on a technicality. On those days, he dreamed of walking away; of finding a deserted beach on some tropical island where he could pretend the decline of human nature didn’t exist.

  Dana shuffled things around the table between them. “I know the statistics. And I’m supposed to be a detached professional. But every time I see someone new I hope I can help them. I hope I can show them the cycle of abuse can be broken and they don’t have to live with it. But no matter how hard I try, most of them go back to their abusers and then become abusers themselves. If they live.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose as tears fell into her lap. “I just don’t succeed often enough.”

  Jack’s protective instincts made him want to take the hurt away. He touched her arm. What could you say to someone who saw the dredges of humanity on a daily basis? How did she manage to deal with the violence, anger, and sadness day in and day out?

  “My patients know. They see the abuse, are often part of it, but still they go back. And sometimes, I just can’t get through to them.” Dana wiped at her face with her palms then got quickly out of the chair. She put away the planner and iPad and sat in the tall leather chair behind her desk. She began shuffling files and papers from one spot to another, tapping edges to align them perfectly before she sat them down.

  “Was she married?” Jack asked.

  Dana’s eyes were dark and shadowed with rage when she turned to face Jack. “Boyfriend. He wouldn’t marry her.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Ronald Parker. They lived in some apartment around the mall, I think.”

  Jack didn’t have to ask which mall. There was only one, and it was a sorry excuse for a mall unless you counted the outlet mall in Gulfport. People around here referred to that as the Outlet Mall, though, so Jack knew Dana was talking about Edgewater Mall.

  He watched for a moment as she continued to fidget, her hands and her focus flitted from one meaningless task to the next. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Dana drew in a deep breath and pushed herself up from the chair with clenched fists on the desktop. She winced and scowled when her knuckles popped against the wood. Then her face relaxed, as if a mask had been placed over her features to soften them.

  Jack nodded. He understood her anger. He understood too, that her obsession with working out was her way of dealing with what she saw and heard inside this office. People’s nature rarely changed, and when you worked with the people he and Dana saw frequently, a transformation was almost non-existent. On the rare occasion someone did change, it was usually too late and was brought about by a forced alteration of circumstances, like losing a child or jail time.

  Dana’s frustration reminded him of his own anger and frustration. It gnawed at his stomach, making acid burn in his throat. He wanted to hurt Tim Burris. There was no way to deny that. He prayed, for Leslie’s sake, and for Lisa’s sake, that when he came face to face with his sister’s boyfriend there would be bars bet
ween them.

  “How about you, Jack? You okay?” Dana assessed him with eyes the color of leaves at the end of the summer. Deep and weathered, like she’d seen far more pain and anger than anyone her age should have seen in a lifetime.

  “Yeah.” He shook his head. “No, not really. But I’ll be fine. It’s Lisa I worry about the most.”

  “Listen, if it would help, we can get together for dinner and talk about it. Maybe if you understood where Lisa’s at and what she’s going through you would feel more in control. Knowledge can, indeed, be considered power.” Dana moved to stand beside him and his senses were again assaulted by the scent of the soap and shampoo she had used at the gym. If possible, the combination was even more intense than her earlier scent.

  “Maybe,” Jack tried to imagine talking about his own problems. He didn’t like the thought, didn’t like that she might actually see his fault in all of this. How he had failed his wife, his daughter, and now his niece. “I’m not sure when I’ll be done tonight, though. And I want to see Lisa when I’m finished at work. It’ll be late.”

  Although it might be nice spending some time with Dana. If not to talk about what was happening with Leslie and Lisa, then just to not be alone with his own thoughts. “We’ll see,” he added as an afterthought, leaving the possibility open.

  “Well, I usually eat late. Call me if you want someone to share dinner with.”

  “Sure.” Jack turned to leave. He wasn’t ready to face Kate. He still had to explain everything that was happening to her. But he also didn’t want to stay and give Dana time to start digging into his psyche. That couldn’t end well, not when he had so much buried there.

  “I’ll let you know when we get confirmation on the ID,” he said over his shoulder as the office door closed behind him. As he left the building, the receptionist’s intercom buzzed.

  FIVE