River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(26)

She stepped outside. A target had been set up in the backyard. He looked at her. She didn’t understand.

“You need to learn how to shoot.”

She shook her head and crossed her arms, her armpits damp.

He ignored her. “We’ll start with this.” He checked the small Ruger was loaded before he held it out to her. She wouldn’t take it.

“Go on,” he said. “You’re old enough to understand the responsibility of it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

“Why?”

“You need to learn how to protect yourself.”

“From what?”

He didn’t answer. She’d known he wouldn’t. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. He was wrong about so many things. But a young girl didn’t talk back to her father. At least not this young girl.

Finally, he said, “No country girl worth a spit doesn’t know how to fire a gun.”

He knew just what to say to get to her, to weaken her resolve. She wanted nothing more than to show him that she was worth so much more than spit.

“Take it,” he said, daring her to.

She lifted the gun from his hand. It was heavy and bent her wrist. He helped her by holding her arm straight until she got used to the weight of it, the feel.

For the next two hours, Becca learned about guns, their parts, how to aim, how to shoot. It became their routine that autumn. Every Sunday morning during the months of October and November, while the rest of her classmates slept in or attended church services, Becca and her father shot targets.

She’d never again feel as close to him as she had on those Sunday mornings, standing next to him, smelling the smoke on his clothes, the soap on his skin, breathing in his father smell.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Parker hung his jacket on the back of his chair at the station. He’d canvassed the entire area by the river where the body had been found, walked up and down Delaware Drive, talked to business owners, locals. He’d handed out his card, hoping someone would come forward with any information about the homicide, who the victim was. They still hadn’t identified the body.

It was turning out to be a long day.

He turned on his computer. Bill dropped a box onto Parker’s desk.

“What’s this?” Parker asked.

“The file on that first case we talked about.” He rolled down his shirt sleeves, buttoned the cuffs. He reached for his sport coat.

“Where are you going?” Parker asked.

“Lieutenant Sayres requested me back at headquarters. They got a string of shootings in Easton he wants me to work.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Afraid not.” He tapped the box full of files. “Good luck,” he said and left.

“Hey, Sarge,” Parker called to his sergeant, whose office door was open. “When am I going to get a permanent partner?” There were supposed to be two investigators assigned to the station. As of now, Parker was it.

Sarge didn’t even glance in Parker’s direction, continued looking at the computer screen when he said, “I’m working on it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Parker opened the box that Bill had dumped on his desk. He pulled out the top folder, the case name, River Body; the date, October 1994.

Parker had been just a kid when the body had been pulled from the river, but it wasn’t something he’d ever forgotten. In a small town like Portland, everyone remembered where they’d been, what they’d been doing when the discovery had been made. It had been something the locals had talked about behind closed doors for years.

He opened up the file. After all this time, he was going to get an inside look at the case. He read the first report. The victim had been a thirty-four-year-old male. He’d had a criminal record, several arrests for armed robbery and auto theft. Died of a gunshot wound to the chest fired from a .30-06 rifle. The body had been stripped, gutted with a five-and-a-half-inch large-blade knife, then dumped in the Delaware River. He’d been discovered on the riverbank on the Pennsylvania side by a couple of kids who had been out fishing. Neither the gun nor the knife had been found. The victim’s clothes had never been recovered. No witnesses had come forward. No arrest had been made.

Primary suspect: Russell Jackson, deceased.

Parker searched the box, found the photos of the victim’s body. “Jesus,” he said, flipping through them. They looked an awful lot like the body they’d pulled from the river today. He set the images aside, checked his phone for the time, then grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair.

“Where are you off to?” Sarge asked.

“Autopsy.”



“You’re late,” Sandra said. She was standing at the autopsy table in her lab coat and gloves, her curly hair tucked under a cap, the victim’s body laid out in front of her. She wore a mask. She could’ve been a surgeon, she’d told Parker once, but she’d preferred patients who couldn’t complain.

“Sorry, lost track of time,” he said, smearing peppermint oil on a mask, covering his nose and mouth. After a minute, the oil did nothing to block the smell.

“What’s this, our second date?” Sandra asked. “And I’m already hearing excuses.”

He smiled behind the mask. She was teasing him, of course. This was his second autopsy; he’d preferred to skip them on the other cases he’d worked, relying on her detailed reports. But this was his first case as lead, and he felt he should be here. “What did I miss?” he asked.