Chapter 4
Later that afternoon the guys dropped Doreen and her animals off at her house, and she ordered Mack to go home. “You’ve been trying to hide the fact that your shoulder’s killing you,” she noted quietly. “Go home and get your painkillers and rest.’
He leaned over, kissed her gently on the cheek, and said, “Got it.” He walked back to the truck.
She ushered the animals inside and headed for the coffeepot. The coffee they’d had at their picnic had been a long time ago. They’d spent the afternoon just visiting on the beach, swimming, and having a grand old time. Mugs had thoroughly enjoyed himself, as had the others. She opened up the rear kitchen door for Goliath to wander through, and he headed straight for the garden and threw himself down under a rosebush.
She stared at him. “Of all the plants that you can go to, why one with thorns?”
But his tail just switched in answer. She propped open the kitchen door and went back inside. She didn’t need food, but coffee would be nice. She checked her email on her phone and realized that the file from the captain was there. Excitedly she turned on her laptop and downloaded the file. It would take her a bit to go through it, although it was mighty slim. She hated that. And, of course, that’s also why nobody had a chance to solve anything because they couldn’t get any information to start investigating.
As she flicked through the material, she realized it was missing things, like witness interviews and detective notes. She quickly sent the captain a text message, asking about that.
When he called her a few moments later, he explained, “That’s part of the problem. I was the only witness. It was a drive-by shooting, and I couldn’t even tell you now what kind of truck it was,” he admitted. “Just that a truck came up, someone shot at the two of us, and took off.”
“Ouch. Shot at both of you?”
“Yes.”
She added, “You didn’t tell me that. Did it hit you?”
A heavy sigh came on the other end of the line. “Yes, I took a bullet in the arm, but the other bullet killed Paul. So I understand if there’s absolutely nothing you can do,” he stated, “but I’m the only witness to that shooting. And I couldn’t even tell the cops anything important back then. It happened so fast.”
“Right,” she noted. “Let me go through this file, and I’ll get back to you if I have any more questions.” And, with that, she hung up.
Knowing it would be easier to read, she quickly printed out the dozen pages in the file. With that done, she took her first cup of coffee and headed out to the deck, along with a notepad. As she read through the information, she realized once again why Paul’s murder had never been solved.
Outside of the two kids, nobody—supposedly—had seen anything. The boys were in the front yard, where there was a large garden of sunflowers. The kids had been playing in the sunflowers when the vehicle had pulled up. A handgun had appeared out of the open window on the driver’s side. Two shots were fired. Both kids went down. One died; one did not.
She also understood the captain having a horrible sense of guilt because he had survived. There was absolutely no cognitive way to make him feel any differently, and she also knew that survivor’s guilt was a real thing. Sometimes people could come to terms with it, and other times it was just almost impossible. Still, Doreen didn’t want that to be the case for the captain. He’d done a lot for her, and he’d looked the other way many times, when maybe he shouldn’t have.
After the shooting, Henry Hanson, now known as the captain, started screaming right away. Adults had come running, but it was too late to save Paul. The captain had been rushed to the hospital and questioned by the police, but he didn’t have much to tell them. And she could understand that. The viewpoint from an eleven-year-old versus an adult looking back on the case, must have been pretty traumatic.
And so he would also want somebody else to look into it. But had he reviewed the case in all these subsequent years? She had to believe the answer to her question was a yes. Anything else didn’t fit the man. But that also begged another question. Had anybody in the precinct looked at it? Did anybody have any updated information? She checked the dates of the entries within the file. The last note stated it had been looked at fifteen years ago by Cold Case Division, and they didn’t have any new information.
She knew that was often the case. Things would sit there and wait, until somebody had something to add to it. Otherwise the case required manpower that they didn’t have. It bothered her to think that these cases were going cold and that people were not doing anything about it.
Only to realize that wasn’t quite true. “That’s what I’m doing.”
And this was definitely one that interested her, partly because the captain’s life had been affected, and she could easily see how it had put him on a path to law enforcement and how frustrating to be on that path and yet still not solve this crime.
That pressure, the guilt, the sense of failure, in a way, all that would be hard to come back from.
Her heart went out to the captain, and she knew she’d do everything she could to solve this. The trouble was, there was absolutely no information. As she sat here pondering it, she sent Mack a text. He sent the file. Expecting a phone call right away, she was surprised when there wasn’t one. She waited and waited but still no answer. Then realized he was probably busy or maybe visiting with his mom and his brother.
She wasn’t exactly sure what would delay him, but it’s not like he could be at her beck and call just because she had texted him. Still, it felt off. Hating that, she decided to get up and to do something different to help her brain process this meager set of information. Still, she wanted it to shake around in her brain for a bit.
She made note of the cousin’s name—Paul Hephtner. She had trouble pronouncing it because it looked like some extra letters were in the name. Nevertheless, it was Hephtner. “H-E-P-H-T-N-E-R,” she reiterated to herself.
When her phone rang, she was pretty sure it was Mack, so she just called out, “Hello.”
But it was Nan.
“Hey,” Nan answered.
A certain amount of fatigue filled her voice that immediately had Doreen sitting back down again and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. I’m fine. I’ve just been doing too much.”
Doreen frowned at that, her mind cataloging everything that she could imagine Nan getting involved in, and asked, “Are you sure?” she asked cautiously.
“I’m fine,” Nan replied in a more convincing tone.
Doreen sagged back slightly. “I hope so,” she noted worriedly. “Maybe you just need to take a couple days to relax.”
At that, Nan laughed uproariously. “You forget. That is what I do.”
“Oh, I know you say that,” Doreen replied, “but then, if that’s the case, how can you be so tired and sounding so rundown?”
“We had a tournament this morning,” she explained. “And I ended up playing to the end, which is more than I normally do.”
“Are we talking lawn bowling?”
“No, pool,” she corrected.
At that, Doreen looked down at her phone in shock. “You play pool?”