Chapter 3: No Interest
Dean’s POV
"You men are all the same! You like this kind of slut, so you're backing her up, right? Don't forget, my daddy's the mayor!"
Vivian jabbed her finger at Rick, her voice like nails scraping across a blackboard.
I walked over and tossed Rick a USB drive. "There's surveillance footage from the fish market this morning. This Vivian lady threw the first punch."
I saw the short-haired woman nod at me, a grateful smile crossing her face.
After a moment, Rick turned to Vivian. "I'm really sorry, but the security footage shows you threw the first punch. We can't arrest Miss Tara here. You need to go on home now."
Tara?
I'd heard that name more than once around the office.
During lunch breaks, the guys always talked about some new bar owner who'd come to Willowbend. A woman named Tara.
Besides calling her gorgeous, they said plenty of crude things too. Some even made bets about who could score with her first.
She had to be that Tara.
Vivian's shrill voice snapped me back to reality. "I'm gonna file a complaint against all of you for police misconduct! Y'all are gonna get fired!"
"Well, you better get yourself a lawyer first," I said, gesturing toward the door. "Please don't interfere with police business."
Vivian stormed out, her two little followers trailing behind.
Then Tara walked up to us. "I can't thank you both enough," she said to Rick and me. She pulled out a business card and held it toward me. "Y'all should stop by my bar tonight. First round's on me."
I took the card. "Thanks, but I don't drink anymore."
She moved closer, placing her hand on my chest for a moment, then leaned in close to my ear. "The bar isn't just about drinking."
After she left, Rick winked at me. "Looks like the bar owner's got a thing for you."
"I'm not interested."
I'd seen plenty of women like her in New York. Beautiful, dangerous women who could wrap men around their fingers without breaking a sweat.
They'd slide up to you at some upscale bar in Manhattan, all legs and perfume and promises, then drain your bank account and your soul before moving on to the next mark.
The smart ones never looked desperate or needy. They played it cool, made you think you were the one doing the chasing.
"Jesus, man, you're thirty-three years old. You should be in your sexual prime, out there getting some action. Don't just think about work all the time." Rick shook his head like I was some kind of freak. "Wait till you get to my age. You see your wife in sexy lingerie and you're more scared than excited."
The other officers erupted in laughter.
Someone called out from across the room, "If you're not interested in that bar owner, I might have to make a move myself."
Another cop held up his hands, forming the shape of a woman's curves. "Did you see that ass? You know she's a wild one. Think you can handle her?"
"Tommy, you couldn't handle a librarian, let alone someone like that," Rick shot back, which got everyone laughing again.
"Hey, I got game," Tommy protested. "Remember that waitress from Baton Rouge? She was all over me."
"Yeah, because you tipped her fifty bucks on a ten-dollar meal. That's not game, that's charity."
More crude laughter filled the station. I felt my jaw clench as the conversation devolved into exactly the kind of locker room bullshit that made me lose faith in small-town law enforcement.
"You done?" I cut through their laughter. "Because we've got a body that came out of the river this morning. Has the autopsy report come back yet?"
Rick waved a dismissive hand. "What's the rush? Clyde doesn't work that fast."
"Did you even check recent missing persons reports?"
"Why would I? Nobody's been reported missing in the past two months. Probably some drunk from another town who fell in the river and floated down here. We'll wait for Clyde's report."
I was about to lose my temper when Rick slid a greasy pizza box across his desk toward me.
"Brought you lunch. No matter how busy you get, you gotta eat something."
I swallowed my anger and grabbed a slice.
After I finished eating, I headed out to find Clyde.
The morgue was in the basement of the county building, a cramped space that smelled like disinfectant and death.
Clyde looked up from his paperwork when I knocked on the doorframe.
"Water in her lungs," he said without preamble, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. "She was alive when she went into the river. Blood's too degraded to tell us much. Stomach's full of river water and mud, nothing useful there. But the liver might give us something."
"So the direct cause of death was drowning?"
"Far as I can tell. Apart from the catfish damage, looks like every other drowning victim I've examined." Clyde pulled off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. "I'll have the liver toxicology back in a few days."
"Any chance we could do facial reconstruction? Get an idea what she looked like before..."
“We can recreate a rough idea of what she might have looked like, based on bone structure, but we can’t tell the color of her skin or hair.”
He paused, looking around his bare-bones facility. "Problem is, we don't have the equipment here for that kind of work."
"What if we sent it to the New York forensics lab? I might have some friends who could help."
Clyde's face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. "Really? That would be incredible! I haven't done facial reconstruction in years."
"How long would something like that take?"
"Usually one to two weeks, but I could rush it. Get it done in a week if we move fast."
I nodded, already thinking about which contacts I could reach out to in New York.
A few nights later, one of the guys was getting married and Rick insisted on throwing him a bachelor party.
"You're coming," Rick said when I tried to decline. "You need to make friends. You've been in town almost a month and I haven't seen you socialize once. What, you think you're too good for us small-town folks?"
"It's not that. I just don't drink anymore."
"Then don't drink. But you're coming anyway."
Under Rick's relentless pressure, I found myself walking through the doors of June's Bar.