Page 28 of Dirty Valentine (A J.J. Graves Mystery #17)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The drive to River Road stretched before us like a descent into something darker than mere night.
Our headlights carved narrow tunnels through the Virginia darkness, illuminating ancient oaks that twisted overhead like arthritic fingers reaching across the asphalt.
Spanish moss hung from their branches in ghostly curtains, swaying in the humid breeze with an almost hypnotic rhythm that made my skin crawl.
“Do we know anything about Judith Hughes?” Cole asked over the radio from Martinez’s car, his voice cutting through the oppressive silence that had settled over us since leaving the crime scene. “What are we walking into?”
“Her name came up initially when we did the cursory background checks on ancestors we were able to trace from the names of the marked graves,” I said, scrolling through my phone.
“I’m pulling up the file now. We’d placed her down on the list because her current address is listed outside of King George.
She’s a grad student at Georgetown. Twenty-four years old.
Both parents deceased when she was nineteen.
Her father to cancer and then her mother six months later when she and a couple of friends were robbed at gunpoint outside of Ford’s Theater.
Took a bullet to the chest when she tried to push the attacker away. ”
“Losing both parents in a short amount of time could make a person a sociopath and go on a killing spree,” Martinez said, his voice thin through the receiver.
I opened Jack’s portable laptop that was attached to the dash in his Tahoe, an idea forming. It took less than two minutes to find what I was looking for.
“Judith Hughes purchased a Walther P22 from a shop in Richmond in December of last year.”
“That’s why I never believe in coincidences,” Cole said. “I guess we need to ask her if she’s recently shot anyone with it.”
The deeper we drove into the plantation district, the more the landscape seemed to change around us.
Modern subdivisions and strip malls gave way to vast stretches of farmland punctuated by the skeletal remains of old tobacco barns.
Massive houses set far back from the road loomed in the darkness like sleeping giants, their windows dark and unwelcoming.
“There,” I said, pointing to a rusted mailbox that leaned at a drunken angle beside a crumbling stone pillar. “1247.”
The driveway was little more than a dirt track that wound through an avenue of live oaks so old they might have witnessed the original land grants being signed.
Their branches formed a canopy so thick that even our headlights seemed to dim, and I found myself holding my breath as we navigated the narrow path.
Then the house appeared, and my heart sank.
The Hughes mansion had once been magnificent—a perfect example of antebellum architecture with its soaring columns and wraparound veranda.
But neglect had taken its toll. Paint peeled from the shutters in long strips, several porch boards had rotted through completely, and ivy covered half the structure in a green shroud that made it look more like a mausoleum than a home.
“Looks like she didn’t keep things up after her parents died,” Jack said. “It’d be hard for a kid to even know where to start with a place like this.”
“You’d think she’d have sold it,” I said.
“Family legacy is a weird thing sometimes,” Jack said. “The blood of her ancestors is soaked into the dirt of those fields. And the stories those walls could tell might be the only thing she has left of her family to hold on to.”
Jack parked behind an old pickup truck that sat in the circular drive like a monument to better times. No lights showed in any of the windows, and the only sound was the wind moaning through the broken shutters and the rhythmic creak of a loose board somewhere on the porch.
Cole and Martinez parked on the other side of the circular drive so we could all get out easy in case of an emergency.
“Maybe you should stay in the car,” Jack said, his hand on his holster. “She could be dangerous.”
“You go, I go,” I said, reaching in my bag for my Beretta and sticking it in the small of my back.
The truth was I was always armed. There’d been a time when I’d stared into the eyes of my killer and had nothing to fight back with but weakness.
I thought I’d breathed my last breath, and don’t remember anything until I’d woken up in the hospital attached to machines.
That was over two years ago, when Jeremy Mooney had nearly strangled me to death.
I’d been driven to arm myself first out of fear, but then I’d seen it as a necessity for the kind of work I’d been called to.
I wouldn’t be a weak link for Jack or any of the team.
If I went with them on a call they deserved to have someone to watch their backs.
Not someone who needed saving. So I’d trained and worked until the fear was gone and I wasn’t a liability to anyone.
Jack looked at me and nodded. I knew he was thinking of the baby. I was too. But the baby needed a father and I trusted Jack with both of our lives.
“Guess we don’t need a warrant,” Cole said, pointing to the open front door and drawing his weapon.
We approached the house, our footsteps echoing off the warped porch boards. The smell hit me as we reached the entrance—something stale and wrong, like flowers left too long in stagnant water.
“Ms. Hughes?” Jack called out, his voice swallowed by the darkness inside. “King George County Sheriff’s Department. We need to speak with you.”
Silence answered us. Even the wind and land hushed.
“We’ll circle around back,” Cole said, and he and Martinez split off in different directions.
Jack pushed the front door open a little wider and the hinges creaked.
My flashlight beam revealed a scene of elegant decay—crystal chandeliers thick with dust, furniture covered in white sheets like ghosts waiting for resurrection, and family portraits hanging at odd angles as if the house itself was slowly sliding sideways.
But it was the living room that told the real story. Overturned chairs, scattered papers, and dark stains on the Oriental rug that might have been wine or might have been something much worse.
“Someone was here,” Jack said, noting the coffee cup still sitting on a side table, its contents long cold but the ring still visible on the wood beneath it. It was untouched by dust or time.
I picked my way carefully through the debris, my flashlight beam playing across family photographs that had been scattered across the floor. In several of them, faces had been scratched out with something sharp, leaving only gouged holes where eyes and mouths should have been.
“Jack,” I whispered, crouching down near the fireplace. “Look at this.”
My light had caught something that made my pulse quicken—tiny droplets of what looked suspiciously like blood, barely visible against the dark wood of the floor. They formed an irregular pattern leading from the overturned furniture toward the back of the house.
“Blood trail,” Jack confirmed, kneeling beside me. “Not completely dry. Could be from this afternoon or evening.”
We followed the scattered drops through the formal dining room, past the kitchen, and out through a back door that stood wide open to the night.
The trail continued across an overgrown garden where weeds grew waist-high and the remains of what had once been elegant landscaping now resembled something from a fairy tale gone wrong.
Our flashlight beams converged on a massive structure that loomed against the star-filled sky—a barn that belonged to the plantation’s working past, easily twice the size of most modern houses. Its weathered siding had turned silver-gray with age, and one of its doors hung partially open.
Cole and Martinez came met us where we stood and I shined the flashlight on the drops of blood leading toward the barn.
“Should we call for backup?” Martinez asked, his hand resting on his weapon.
“Let’s see what we’re dealing with first,” Jack said. “But stay sharp. Someone was hurt here, and whoever did it might still be around.
“Wasn’t it Hansel and Gretel that followed the trail of candy?” Cole asked. “Why am I feeling that right now?”
“I don’t know,” Martinez said. “But I think they get shoved in an oven once they reach the end of the trail, so maybe think of a different fairy tale.”
“No time like the present,” Jack said, taking the lead.
As soon as we started walking it’s like the earth could breathe again and inhaled deeply.
The barn seemed to pulse as we approached, its metal roof expanding and contracting with temperature changes that created an irregular rhythm of pops and groans.
Wind whistled through gaps in the siding, creating a sound like distant voices whispering secrets we weren’t meant to hear.
Cole and Martinez used their own flashlights, adding to the harsh pool of illumination that only seemed to make the shadows deeper and more threatening.
The barn doors opened with high-pitched squeals that set my nerves on edge and made the flesh on my arms pebble.
They revealed an interior that was a maze of agricultural equipment from decades past. Hay bales stacked to the rafters created narrow corridors between towering walls of moldering straw, and ancient farm machinery cast twisted shadows that seemed to move independently of our flashlight beams.
The smell inside was overwhelming—decades of hay and manure, mixed with something fresher and more disturbing. The metallic tang of blood, and underneath it all, the sour scent of human fear.
“Spread out,” Jack ordered in a whisper. “Watch your corners.”
I followed the blood trail deeper into the barn, my light playing across the rough-hewn beams overhead. The drops were becoming more frequent now, forming an almost continuous line that led toward the back of the structure where a series of horse stalls had been built against the far wall.
My heart was hammering so hard I was sure everyone could hear it.
Every shadow seemed to hide a threat, every sound—the settling of old wood, the scurrying of mice, the distant hoot of an owl.
But I couldn’t ignore the evidence. Someone had been hurt, and that someone had come here looking for safety.
The stall doors were all standing open except for one near the back corner. I motioned for Jack and he stepped in front of me, his flashlight and his weapon following the blood into a stall, where fresh straw had been scattered over what must have been decades of accumulated debris.
Jack pushed open the stall door, our flashlight beams sweeping across the interior, and that’s when I heard it—the faintest sound of labored breathing coming from behind a pile of feed sacks stacked against the back wall.
“Jack,” I whispered, nodding to the hiding spot.
We approached carefully and shined our lights behind the feed bags. A woman looked back at us, and my lungs froze with fear and my heart stuttered.
Behind the feed sacks, a young woman was huddled against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. Blood seeped through a makeshift bandage on her left arm, and her face was pale with shock. When our lights hit her, she flinched back, raising her good arm to shield her eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Don’t let them find me.”
“Judith Hughes?” Jack asked, lowering his weapon but keeping it ready.
She nodded, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on her face. “They tried to kill me,” she said. “Just like the others. But I got away.”