AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He heaved himself from the chair. Benny’s return rode on his mother’s shoulders now. If Mrs. Thigpen had gauged Shawna’s rehabilitation correctly, they had nothing to worry about. For Benny’s sake, he hoped the caseworker was right.
Even if that meant losing Benny all over again when Shawna got out of prison.
* * *
Shawna Garza swished the brush in the toilet one more time and flushed it. The smell of urine gagged her. No amount of scrubbing would get these toilets cleaned. It didn’t matter how often she washed them. Everything in this place was dirty, even though it smelled like bleach.
She couldn’t wait to get out, start a new life with her stash. She and the kid could go someplace far away and get a fresh start. She’d buy herself some fancy new clothes and a nice car. Yeah, a convertible. They could go to California, to Hollywood, drive around on Rodeo Drive. She’d put Benny in one of those fancy private schools so he wasn’t hanging around all the time being annoying.
Grinning at the thought, she turned to grab the mop and start on the floor.
“Whatcha doin’, sweet pea?” A muscular arm clamped down around her neck from behind. Hot breath touched her left ear. She recognized the voice. Gina. The inmate who had killed her husband because he cheated on her with another biker. Gina was the leader of one of the gangs in Shawna’s cell block. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Back off.” Shawna struggled to break free. She wasn’t interested in being anybody’s pretty girl—not unless they had something to give her in return. “Get off me!”
She had worked so hard not to be alone long enough for this woman to catch her. As a trustee, Gina could turn up anywhere on the cell block. They’d been playing cat and mouse for weeks. Shawna had let her guard down for a second. Just a second.
“Think you’re too good for me, don’t you, pretty girl?” The voice was low.
A shudder ran through Shawna. “I don’t want no trouble.”
She managed to tuck her hand in the front of her pants for a second and grab the piece of metal she had hidden there. It looked like part of a table leg. She’d found it stuck up against a bookshelf in the library one day when she was doing research on her case. Carefully, she slid the shank out, keeping it flat behind her hand and arm.Do it. Do it!
She tried to raise her arm enough to strike back toward the woman’s body behind her. Gina, maybe a half foot taller and thirty pounds heavier, spun her like a child. Shawna’s back smacked up against the bathroom wall. Gina crowded so close Shawna could see the dark fillings in her back teeth and smell her funky breath.
The anticipation in the other woman’s flat brown eyes told Shawna she had to act now. With a grunt she jerked the homemade weapon up into a defensive position. Gina’s face registered surprise before she brought her thick fist down on Shawna’s forearm, the blow causing the shank to clatter to the floor.
“You—” Obscenities rained down on Shawna. She tried to slide down toward the floor, toward the weapon. She had been so careful to hide it, so careful to keep it close, now it was gone.
Gina slapped her back in a bone-jarring blow that sent Shawna’s head smacking against the wall. Pain ricocheted through her brain. Her sight blurry, she felt around for the weapon. Gina got there first. She grabbed the homemade knife with her other hand. “Teach you a lesson, you—”
Shawna felt the first slice, hot and bruising.No, I’m not done yet.The pain blossomed in her stomach. She struggled for air. Her body slid down to the floor, still sitting up.
A red convertible. Rodeo Drive. Her dreams receded until they were tiny specks on a far horizon. Then disappeared silently into black night.
Chapter Eight
Inhaling the odor of bleach, Alex stood next to Cooper, watching forensic anthropologist Jennifer McDonald carefully arrange the last of the boiled and scoured bones in anatomical order. He’d been surprised and pleased when Cooper had agreed to let him accompany him to the county morgue. Being the one—with Deborah—to find this little girl, had given him a strong, personal incentive to find out what had happened to her. Almost as strong as the desire to find Benny’s kidnapper and nail him to a wall somewhere.
He glanced at his watch—at least eight hours had passed since Benny’s abduction. He studied at Cooper. It was the sheriff’s detective’s show. He needed move faster, push harder. “Well, what do you know so far?”
Cooper’s expression tightened. “What my young and impatient colleague means to say is we really appreciate you coming in on your day off.” He twisted his ragged Stetson in big hands. “We don’t mean to rush you, but we’ve got another case involving a child who’s still alive pending as well.”
McDonald didn’t look up from her examination. She’d already explained almost two-thirds of the body’s one hundred twenty-seven bones were present and accounted for. That was pretty good, she’d said. Sometimes all they brought her was a skull or a femur. “COD looks like it’ll be blunt force trauma to the skull. This child received a crushing blow to the head. Massive damage to the back of the skull.”
It was a beginning. A small one. They’d known from the start her death had been a violent, ugly one. Otherwise, why would someone have buried her in a secluded spot, hoping no one would find her? Resolving the more difficult issues of age, race, and identification would be necessary in order to find her killer. “So the blow caused instantaneous death?”
“There’s no callus so the fracture occurred shortly before death. There are some peri-mortem healed fractures from much earlier.” She pointed to a series of x-rays clipped to a light panel on the wall. “More than one. Here to the radius in the right arm, the ulna in the left. Two ribs broken.”
“You’re suggesting abuse?”
“Systematic and regular abuse.”
Cooper smacked his hat against the wall. “How long has she been out there?” His voice sounded hoarse.
McDonald sighed. “That, Detective, will take some time.”
Cooper responded before Alex could protest. “A timeline is critical to figuring out who did this to her. It will also allow us to eliminate certain people.”
