In Our Darkness - 6. Chapter 6: New Lead

Kat Bryce was stuck, and she knew it. Barely any evidence, no witnesses besides the two victims, no security footage, and no car. The car was their only hope, but it seemed to have just vanished into thin air. No repair shop had seen it. The grey Honda disappeared without a trace, and with it any hope of finding the perpetrator. Kat wanted to remain hopeful, but her partner’s face made that a difficult task.

Jack sat at his desk with a hardened gaze, and a pair of set lips and burrowed eyebrows.

“Like I said…fucked,” Jack sighed as he twirled a pen between his long fingers. His alert blue eyes drowning in anger and disappointment. Kat knew that he hated cases he couldn’t solve, and it was becoming apparent that he believed this case would be another one of those. She didn’t want to go down that path. She didn’t want to give in and believe that they wouldn’t be able to help the Andrews’ rest better at night by giving them some sort of closure. She couldn’t allow herself to think that this was even an option. She would need to explore every possibility before throwing in the towel on this case.

She remembered the look in David Andrews’ eyes. A look of unimaginable pain and confusion that haunted her every night since she met him. Kat wanted to relive him of that look—help him heal.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she shot back, annoyed that Jack was always right.

“Well, that’s that. Not much else we can do at this point besides running an ad for the car and waiting.”

“So that’s it? We’re leaving the fate of this case hanging on the hope that someone saw a damaged Honda drive by?” she asked frustrated, even though she knew what the answer would be.

“You’ve got a better idea?” he asked, and she plopped down even further in her seat, defeated.

“I want to help them Jack, I promised I would help them.”

“Well, you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” he replied without much empathy. But again, he was right. She shouldn’t have promised the couple that she would find the guy and bring him to justice. She had no right to make such a promise. It was a stupid thing to do. But they looked so broken and she just wanted to give them some sort of hope, some sort of assurance that things would be okay eventually.

She thought of the Andrews’ sitting at home, waiting for a phone call to tell them that the man who ruined their lives was caught, that he would pay and that he would never do this again to anyone else. Yet here she was, sitting with nothing, twiddling her thumbs.

“Let’s grab lunch,” Jack suggested, and she scoffed at the idea.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Staring at the paperwork won’t help you catch him any sooner.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe I’ll think of something.”

“I do know that, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. This isn’t a TV show. Being here day and night and torturing yourself by not eating or sleeping and hoping for a brilliant idea to strike you may sound great in theory, but that’s not how real detective work looks like. I’m starting to feel like I haven’t taught you anything so far.”

He sounded disappointed and she shot him an annoyed look. Why did he have to be so devoid of hope?

“Come on, work will be here when we get back.”

She didn’t want to, but she followed him out the door. He was right after all, she wasn’t going to come up with any new evidence by just sitting at her desk. And she did need to eat in order to function.

As Jack drove them to a close by hole in the wall Mexican restaurant, Kat wondered what he would do when he’d retire. He wasn’t a man who could just sit still and enjoy life, build a house by the beach and look out at the ocean as he sipped on a beer. No, retirement would kill him. He would be the type of person who would work until the day he died. Actually, he would probably die working. She could see him maybe starting a PI firm. She wanted to ask, but seeing the sour mood he was already in, she decided that it would be best not to rattle his cage too much.

Their values didn’t always align, but if there was anything Kat knew about Jack, it was that he would go to hell and back to help those who needed his help. It comforted her knowing that he would most likely continue his work in some capacity, and not waste away sitting on some veranda. She respected him for that.

The waitress took their order and to no surprise Jack got the same thing he always got; he was a man of ritual. Kat stared at the chips and salsa in front of her with no appetite. After Jack took a few bites of the carne asada burrito that he swore up and down could make men weep, he looked at her sternly and said, “Listen, Bryce. Let me be honest with you, this case is going to be a bitch. I’m telling you this, because I can see you’re already getting involved. Way too involved.”

She shot him a look, but he continued, “It’s hard not to, beautiful young couple at the start of their life, their child snatched away from them a day before his birthday, you’d have to be a block of ice not to care. I get it. But the only way we’re going to find who did this, is if we find the car, or if someone talks. The first one, we can look for, the second one is out of our hands. In cases like these, you can’t promise anything. Because when shit goes wrong - and shit has a tendency of going wrong - you will get the full brunt of the parents’ anger and fury. Sometimes even for the rest of your life. Which is okay, because ultimately you know it’s not about you. But you can’t always take that upon yourself willingly. It’s a heavy burden to carry, you understand?”

Kat thought for a minute. She understood, but at the same time she didn’t like the idea of being a disengaged city worker who couldn’t empathize with those they were sworn to help.

“I didn’t become a cop to smell daisies, Jack. I can carry a burden.”

“Sure, you say that now. You’re a baby. You have all these grandiose ideas about honor and ethics and morals. But these cases pile up over the years, Bryce. They pile up like shit, and follow you around, and you can smell their stench for miles. And so can those around you. All the unsolved, all the parents, all the brothers and the sisters of the victim, all the suspects walking around. You cannot let yourself be the emotional dumpster of every case you encounter, you understand?”

“How do you know, wouldn’t it make me better at my job to be at least somewhat involved? I get we’re not supposed to be, but how can you trust someone to solve something if they don’t care about it.”

“Caring clouds your judgement. Caring makes you do things a rational person wouldn’t do. This is why doctors can’t operate on their spouses. You cannot keep a clear mind when you’re too busy caring. We’re here to discover facts, follow clues, bring resolution, solve crimes. We’re not here to hold people’s hands, that’s what counselors are for. We’re not here to make empty promises to grief-stricken parents, you understand? That’s not helping them.”

“I want to better my community, I don’t want to be just another person going through the motions Jack.”

“This is a job. A job like any other. Stop feeling so goddamn special about yourself,” Jack said taking a painfully large bite of his burrito. Suddenly Bryce felt her cellphone vibrate in her pocket. She answered, and after less than a minute her face fell.

“What happened?” Jack asked.

“The car, someone torched the car. Dammit!” she yelled out.

“Let’s go,” said Jack, and they left their unfinished meals behind and hurried to the car.

The drive took less than 15 minutes, and they spent it in silence. Both of them thinking the worst: dead end.

The car was torched minutes away from where the accident took place. In the midst of the woods there was a man-made path that was used by runners as well as road prostitutes looking to make a quick buck. The car was torched approximately 3 miles inside the path.

As they stood by the torched remains of the Honda, Kat realized something. This wasn’t a simple hit-and-run anymore. This just turned personal.

“Well, there’s that,” Jack commented and then threw down the small notebook he was holding with such force that Kat almost jumped.

“Maybe we can salvage some print off of it…anything.”

“Prints? Off of what? There’s nothing left,” he replied and once again he was correct. Kat knew that the lab would find nothing.

“There’s two regular girls that work here. Maybe they saw something.”

Jack nodded slowly.

“Let’s go.”

Kat only knew where one of the girls lived, so they drove there first. It was a rundown building in desperate need of a renovation. Dirty stairs and walls of peeling paint leading up to the second floor where a girl called Patrice lived in apartment 36 B. Kat knocked and when the door opened she almost apologized because she thought she got the wrong place.

Patrice looked nothing like the day uniform Kat was used to seeing her in, featuring a short tight skirt, high heels, a revealing top as well as a face full of makeup. The Patrice that Kat saw now looked like a teenage girl. She stood in front of her with a bare face, Minnie Mouse pajamas, hair pulled back into a bun and house slippers.

Her face was on guard. She obviously was not expecting the company of two detectives.

“Patrice, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but do you have a moment?”

“A moment for what?” the woman asked, clearly unhappy with the visitors.

“To answer some questions.”

Patrice looked back into the apartment with concern, as if to check on something.

“Look, this isn’t a good time.”

“It won’t take long, I promise,” Kat assured her. The woman wavered momentarily but finally gave up and nodded.

They walked inside of the tiny apartment and at once Kat saw where Patrice’s hesitation and reluctance came from. Inside of the living room, plopped down on a beaten-up brown couch, sat a boy who looked to be around four-years-old.

“My son, Matt,” Patrice said as an introduction.

“Hi, I’m Kat, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Bryce said smiling at the boy, he smiled back shyly. Meanwhile Jack just grunted a hello.

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Patrice asked and led the way into the tiny kitchen. “I don’t want him to hear anything he shouldn’t,” she added.

“Understood,” Kat replied. She still couldn’t believe it, couldn’t place Patrice as a mother. And then she scolded herself for her lack of imagination. Of course Patrice could be a mother. She wasn’t a one-dimensional character who gave blow jobs to random men driving by, she was a human being.

“Alright, what is this about?” Patrice asked after they all took a seat at the round kitchen table.

“Did you happen to work today?” Patrice rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, why?”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

“Like what?”

“Like a burning car?”

“A what?”

“A car…on fire. Someone torched a car right where you work. We need to know who.”

“Look, I didn’t see no burning car. I don’t know what the hell you’re on about.”

“Did you see anyone pull in a grey Honda?”

“You think I look at the cars that pull in? I’m just trying to get through my day, make some money, come home and keep my son fed. I don’t focus on their cars, or their faces or the nasty shit they say to me. I focus on their wallets. That’s how I survive.” Kat felt a pang of guilt for asking. This woman was just trying to make a living and raise her child in a difficult place. But for the sake of David and Elisabeth, Kat had to ask the difficult questions.

“Listen Patrice, I’m not trying to make your life hard. But the man that torched the Honda is a man that hit a 9-month pregnant woman with his car and left her to bleed out on the side of the road. Her baby died. The fact that he picked that spot to torch the car is not coincidental. So if you saw any guy behaving weird, if you can think of anything, anything at all that could help us, I would be very grateful.”

Patrice thought for a while but then shook her head with an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can think of.”

As they drove back to the station, Kat tried to organize the jumbled thoughts in her head. She felt personally slighted by the torched car. It was as if the perpetrator was giving them the middle finger. It was brazen, and the fact that he returned to the scene of the crime with no hesitation made her worry. She knew that this wasn’t just an accident gone bad, this was something far more sinister.