AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“About half a mile east,” he said. “Maybe less. A couple of minutes’ drive from here.”
“Gambo Creek starts in Bloody Mary, and like you said, it’s only about four miles long until it dumps into the Potomac. We found her about two miles as the creek runs down from here, and we can presume she’d been in the water since early Wednesday morning.”
“It rained Tuesday and into Wednesday,” Jack said. “It wasn’t like today, but it was a steady mist all day. It would’ve been a good time to dump a body. Low visibility. And a lot of Gambo Creek goes through uninhabited land like where we found her. Lots of trees and shrubs for cover.”
“You’d have to know the area pretty well to dump her in one of the uninhabited areas,” I said, adjusting the heater and turning it on high so I could dry out a little bit. “That would make it more probable that her killer was someone local.”
“So,” Jack said, starting the truck and turning on the wipers. “We’ve narrowed it down that we think Cami Downey was murdered somewhere in King George County.” He blew out a breath of frustration. “I’m really starting to hate this rain.”
He pulled over underneath the bridge and was scrolling in his phone. “We need to go round up Thea and Kevin and talk to them before the others get a chance to talk to them.”
I listened as he made a call and asked if Thea Miller was bartending.
“She’s on shift until two o’clock,” Jack said. “Unless you need to get back to the funeral home.”
“It’ll keep,” I said. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be going home tonight anyway.”
“Good thing we don’t have a dog,” he said.
“Sherlock would have been riding shotgun all day,” I said. “He’d probably already have this case solved.”
“Gosh,” Jack said sarcastically. “It’s too bad Sherlock is just a figment of your imagination. We could really use his help right now.”
The Mad King was a block off campus, and it was crowded on a Friday night, even though most of the cars parked on the street had water halfway up their tires. There was a twenty-four-hour breakfast place across the street and a few other fast-food restaurants scattered about. All of it was close enough for students to walk from campus or the apartments close by, though why anyone would want to get out and walk in this was beyond my imagination. Maybe twenty-one-year-olds didn’t feel the rain as long as there was the promise of booze at the end of the rainbow. It had been a long time since I’d been that age, but I knew without a doubt I’d been full of bad decisions and invincibility.
My head bumped against the window as Jack drove onto the sidewalk in front of the bar and flipped his lights on.
“Front door service,” I said. “I like this part of being married to a cop.”
I used my jacket to cover my head from the rain for the short trip inside.
The Mad King was like any other college bar. There were KGU flags hung on the walls and over the bar, basketball and football jerseys in glass-front frames, and televisions in every corner and along the walls. Every TV was playing the KGU basketball game, which had apparently gone into overtime because everyone was screaming and yelling, wearing their red-and-gold shirts proudly.
We maneuvered our way past pub tables and bodies toward the end of the bar. There was only one female bartender, so I assumed I was looking at Thea Miller.
She was attractive in a nerdy kind of way. Her dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail and tied with a scarf, and she wore black-framed glasses. Her face was thin and her lips painted bright red. Her uniform was similar to the male bartenders with a black pinstripe vest, white button-down shirt and black slacks. Her fingers were long and slender and she wore silver rings on the middle fingers of each hand. She was checking a couple of IDs while pouring two drafts.
Each of the barstools was full, but Jack showed his badge and a group of three guys took their beers and made themselves scarce. I wondered how close she was checking the IDs because they all looked very young. Of course, the older I got the more everyone started to look very young.
“Thea Miller?” Jack asked.
“Who wants to know?” the guy to my right said.
“You must be Kevin,” Jack said, smiling with a lot of teeth.
“Like I said, who wants to know? I’m trying to watch the game.”
It was clear this guy was already well on his way to drunk, and I was starting to see an unhealthy pattern emerging with the roommates.
“We’re investigating the murder of Cami Downey,” Jack said. “And you’re both going to want to answer questions without the hassle because I’m feeling kind of mean, and I’ve already had to talk with your roommates and deal with the lawyer stuff. I don’t care that you’re a lawyer. I care that a girl was murdered. Just like you should because it’s what decent people do.”
Kevin was tall and thin through the face with defined cheekbones and arresting blue eyes. His hair was dark brown and unruly, longer over the collar and ears than his two male roommates. He didn’t look like an attorney. He looked like a rich kid who had too much time and money on his hands. I was starting to see a pattern there too.
“Wait a second,” Thea said, narrowing her eyes and wiping wet rings off the bar. “You’re saying Cami is dead? Come on.” She scoffed and started making another drink. “Who are you really? Did John put you up to this?”
“What kind of friends do you have that they’d play a joke on you like that?” I asked.
“You’d have to know John,” she said, still looking skeptical.
