Page 12 of The Bane Witch

12

Black Hoodie

The woman on the other end of the line was hiding something. Her voice was soft, as if she were holding back, afraid to be too loud. And she answered his questions with as few words as possible. He could just barely detect the trace of an accent.

Reyes pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed in. He needed to stay calm if he was going to draw her out. “I know you said he didn’t leave until after lunch, but was he on time arriving the morning of the fifteenth?”

“Mr. Davenport values punctuality,” she responded. She didn’t sound annoyed exactly, just uncomfortable. “He’s a very exact man.”

He frowned. It wasn’t an answer; it was a deflection. “I see.”

Reyes leaned back in his seat. This was going nowhere. He thought about his partner and how Will might handle it. Will had a quieter way of questioning people, less direct, more open-ended. Reyes decided he needed to change direction, come at her from a new angle, knock her off her guard. She was scared. He was certain of that. Whether it was of him or her boss, he couldn’t say. “What else can you tell me about Mr. Davenport?”

There was a pause, a sharp inhale. “Sorry?”

“What’s he like to work for?” Reyes pressed. In his experience, there were two things everybody loved to talk about—themselves and other people. If he could loosen her up, get her talking, make it feel more like a conversation, maybe he could get a straight answer about Henry Davenport’s arrival at work on the morning of August fifteenth. Ever since he’d learned who Mrs. Davenport was to him, this case had become his top priority. If she killed herself, he needed to understand how a woman who was lauded a hero less than twelve months ago, who saved a life without thinking, would choose to take her own. Even if it wasn’t his business, he needed to know why. They were linked, their lives intersected and intertwined at a point neither of them saw coming. No matter his particular views on God, or lack thereof, Reyes didn’t think that was coincidence.

And if she didn’t kill herself, he needed to know what happened to her. He needed to give her justice. It was the least he could do. He owed her his very breath.

The woman cleared her throat. “My job is very rewarding.”

“I’m sure it is,” he confirmed. “I’m just curious what Mr. Davenport is like as a boss.” He’d made a point to call after he watched Henry Davenport drive away from the office, assuming rightly he’d get more out of his administrative assistant that way. “It’s Johanna, right? Is that German?”

“Dutch. My family is from Rotterdam.” She paused again, as if deliberating. “Mr. Davenport… He—he’s not unkind,” she began, which he took to mean that Henry wasn’t kind either. “Just impersonal.”

“I see.” Reyes shifted in his seat, jotting down a note. “Go on.”

“He’s a perfectionist,” she added. “A very driven, ambitious man. Very focused. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

Sure you have, Reyes thought with an eye roll. He wondered if the pretty Dutch assistant was doing more than taking dictation and fielding calls for Henry. “Is he… respectful?”

“In what way?” she pressed.

“Of you? Of women?” He hoped she had the courage to answer him honestly.

“He’s never been inappropriate, if that’s what you’re implying,” she rushed to answer.

“Your relationship has never strayed beyond professional?” he asked. He tapped his pen against the steering wheel. It wouldn’t be the first time a man killed his wife to make way for his mistress. “I assure you, this is strictly confidential.”

“No,” she insisted. “You don’t know him. He’s not like that.”

Something in her tone made him curious. Her words had more weight than they should, like they were filled with sand. Grating. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think he likes women very much,” she blurted. “Not that he’s into men, just… he’s more critical of the women in our office. He’s short with them— us. ”

And there was the crack he could wriggle into and pry open. “Short how?”

“Agitated by them. Maybe even…”

“Go on,” Reyes pressed.

She swallowed. “Maybe even disgusted.”

So, Henry wasn’t the type to shtup the secretary and bump off his wife to get her out of their way. Which meant either Reyes had misjudged him from the beginning, or he was worse. “And does he have friends? At work, I mean. Does he spend time with colleagues outside the office?”

“Never,” she said sharply. “He’s very private.”

“Has he ever spoken of his wife before?”

“As I said, he’s very private,” Johanna said.

“Of course.” She was growing impatient with his questions, probably feeling like she’d said too much. Easy, tiger, he reminded himself, backing off. Knowing when to apply pressure and when to ease it were crucial to this job. And they were not his strong suit. He waited, letting the moment stretch out between them like chewing gum.

“But I have spoken to her on the phone once or twice.” The administrative assistant rushed to fill the void. People generally disliked silence—Reyes loved it. “And I met her once when she came to surprise him for lunch on their anniversary. I don’t think he liked it very much. He’s not really one for surprises. She never returned.”

“How do you mean?” Reyes asked her.

“Oh, well, he’s just very precise. Detail-oriented, you might say. He likes things a certain way. Some would call it controlling, but…”

“What would you call it?”

She sighed. “Orderly.”

“I see.” Reyes jotted the word orderly down in quotes.

“In the extreme,” she added.

Interesting… “What was she like, Johanna? Mrs. Davenport?”

“She was lovely,” the woman gushed.

He had to agree. Even now, he could smell the honeyed scent of her lotion and see her green eyes smiling at him, wide and glossy like glass marbles. He hadn’t been attracted to her in the biblical sense, but he’d found her magnetic. He felt, in that moment between them, as if he’d seen into her, and it was what he’d registered there that drew him—a pulpy brilliance within her, like flower petals made of light.

“A little shy, but that was understandable under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” Something about her niggled at Reyes, like a sensitive tooth, smarting to the touch. He found himself compelled to learn more about her, even if it didn’t seem relevant to the case. He just needed to know, had since that night. But she’d been so quick to dismiss him after, her smile fading like the moon at dawn, almost as if she were horrified by what she’d done. He never quite understood it, and his professionalism had kept him from checking up on her, instead relegating his curiosity to a specific sort of hero worship and pushing himself into stoic detachment after. She didn’t owe him anything. She’d already saved his life.

“Well, she was still healing,” the assistant told him. “A car accident. Her lip was pretty swollen from the airbag. It seemed to make speaking hard.”

Reyes dropped his pen. The man’s cold eyes flashed through him. He’d heard plenty of excuses like this, grown accustomed to them after witnessing his mother’s and sister’s experiences with abusive men—an unexpected fall, a bike accident, the dog knocked them down… On and on they went. Lucia had gotten particularly creative, at one point claiming she was clearing off a high shelf when a pair of pliers had fallen and struck her in the face. He understood their fear, the need to cover up the truth at any cost. He’d seen the way they were punished if they let on, how little protection the law afforded them. It was survival. In a way, he admired his mother’s and sister’s fortitude. He couldn’t free his mother from the tall man’s tyranny as a boy, she had to do that for herself, but it’s what led him to become a cop. And he took the domestic violence calls they got very seriously. Even Will had to admit that Reyes had pushed him to take as much action as the law would allow them. Unfortunately, the law didn’t allow for much. And now his fears about Henry Davenport had been confirmed. Maybe not directly, but Reyes knew how to add. Controlling husband plus busted lip plus missing wife— plus what he’d seen on the bridge footage earlier—equaled a crime.

“Thank you,” he told Johanna. “Can I call again? If I have any other questions?”

“Yes,” she replied. “But only after six.”

He checked the clock on his dash— 6:33 P.M . “Of course,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”

He didn’t hang up right away. Instead, he waited, instinct telling him she was on the verge of breaking.

“Investigator?” she squeaked.

He smiled, grateful. Silence was the one card he could play that never failed him. “Yes?”

“You did say the fifteenth, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Johanna.”

She sighed. “I believe Mr. Davenport did arrive later than usual that day. Something about a tire.”

Did he now? Reyes took a breath, remembering the spare he’d seen on the Jaguar. It could check out, of course. Maybe he pulled over to change a flat. But it would be hard to confirm. And it could just as easily be a clever disguise for his tardiness. He kept his voice steady. “How late?”

“Almost an hour,” she admitted, her voice growing very small. “Please don’t tell him I told you,” she breathed into the phone.

“Confidential, remember,” he reminded her before hanging up.

The station was only a short ride away, and he was eager to share what he’d learned with Will. He found him at his desk behind the partition, slurping a Cup Noodles.

“How do you eat that shit?” Reyes teased. “Didn’t your mother ever cook for you?”

Will scowled up at him. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, brother. Cup Noodles are a classic. Now what do you want?”

Reyes grinned. “I spoke with the assistant—Johanna.”

Will’s face twisted with confusion. “Who?”

“Davenport. The missing person case. The woman from the bridge, remember?” Reyes should have expected this. They’d been called out to an assault and battery charge in the third degree at a bar last night, and the suspect had fled the scene. Will was preoccupied with finding him before he managed to cross state lines. And unlike Emil, he felt the Davenport case was an open-and-shut suicide, even though her body had yet to be recovered. Though with the Atlantic so close, that wasn’t unheard of.

“Right.” Will nodded. “So, does the husband check out?”

“He was at work, but he was late coming in.”

“How late?” Will asked.

“Enough. And the secretary mentioned something about a busted lip.”

His partner frowned. “He looked fine when we saw him.”

“No, the wife.” Reyes told himself to be patient. Will would catch on eventually.

The investigator sat forward. “You mean the day of? This woman saw her?”

He shook his head. “No. Some time before. But it’s suspicious. If this is a domestic violence case—”

Will waved a hand. “Let me stop you right there, Emil. Even if you can prove this guy beats his wife, which I doubt you can, it doesn’t have any bearing on her whereabouts. It could just as easily support her decision to jump as it could indicate anything else, including foul play.”

Reyes grinned down at his partner.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Will set his Cup Noodles down. “You know it makes me nervous when you get that shit-eating grin on your face.”

“Come with me,” he told Will. “I got something to show you that will change your mind.”

Will stood up and wiped his hands on a napkin, following Emil around to his own desk. Reyes sat down at the computer and pulled up the footage he’d been studying from the CCTV camera. He dialed it back to the right moment.

“Just watch,” he told his partner before hitting play.

The image was silent, but soon enough the Davenport woman came into view. She was looking frantically over a shoulder before she doubled over and got sick. Rising, she spun around and began backing up into the railing, putting her hands out in self-defense.

“What the hell…” Will muttered, squinting at the screen.

“Just wait,” Reyes told him.

Together, they watched as she climbed over the bars, sobbing, pleading with someone still off camera. A second later, he appeared. Tall. Lean. A black hoodie obscuring his face and hair. He watched her, pursuing, and then stopped. Something transpired between them, shorter than an eye blink. But Reyes could see the way her face fell, resigned, and how unaffected the man was. A moment later, she dropped. The man stood frozen to the spot before he approached the rail and looked over.

“You see that,” Reyes pointed out. “He’s making sure.”

The man stepped back. He kept his head down, angled away from the camera. He didn’t run—a man like Henry, Reyes thought, would never run—but walked briskly away.

Reyes stopped the footage.

Will whistled. “Did we just witness him force her over that bridge?”

“Looks like it. And remember that pink dot on his shirt sleeve?”

His partner pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are we sure? Couldn’t this have just been some guy walking along when she jumped?”

“You saw the way she was acting,” Reyes told him. “That look like she wasn’t coerced to you? And he saw her do it. He double-checked. If he’d been a bystander, why wouldn’t he call that in? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone?”

“You got a point,” Will conceded.

“I checked the footage every day for the next week and a half and two weeks prior to this date. This guy never returns to the bridge. He’s not just a walker.”

“Okay,” Will said. “So now what?”

Reyes leaned back in his chair. “Now we’re investigating a murder, not a suicide.”

His partner looked nonplussed. “Of course, we are.”

“Also, I found these in the purse.” Reyes picked up a pair of matching post office box keys. “They were tucked into the lining. I’m gonna swing by in a couple of days and check it out.”

“You think her mail is going to tell you something?” Will asked him.

Reyes shrugged. “Maybe. You never know. Why keep both in one place? Besides, it’ll take more evidence than this grainy video to indict him.”

Will shook his head. “You’re like a dog with a bone. You need to listen to me, Emil. I know this woman means something to you, but you need to keep your head no matter what it looks like.”

Reyes jolted back. “What are you saying? You saw the same thing I did on that screen.”

Will exhaled. “Just… don’t go off the deep end, okay? You have a way of getting overinvolved. And this… this is personal. You shouldn’t even be on this case.”

“So?” Will was being overly pragmatic. It didn’t matter how Reyes knew her, how he felt. The truth was the truth, and it was staring them in the face.

“So… we need a body,” Will said. “Convicting someone of murder when there’s no body is harder than threading a needle with a shoelace, video or not.” He pressed his mouth into a shrug and tapped Reyes’s forehead. “Just keep your cop brain on, okay? Promise me. Don’t let the lizard brain take over.”

Reyes swatted his finger away. “Whatever. I know what I’m doing. We need to be careful,” Reyes told him, a serious edge creeping into his tone. “I don’t trust this Davenport guy, but we need his cooperation. If we let on for a second that we suspect him, he’ll try to cover his tracks. Maybe run. You find out anything on that substance from the note and the bridge yet?”

“They’re a match,” Will confirmed. “Something called pokeweed. The berries contain multiple deadly toxins and organic chemicals including phytolacca, saponins, and lectins, which cause significant GI distress. People in Appalachia have tried to use pokeweed as a folk remedy for decades, which results in hospitalizations and deaths every year. Vomiting is among the side effects. Historically, it’s been used for dye.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Reyes asked.

“I don’t know, Emil. I’m generally scared of whatever you’re thinking.”

Reyes laughed. “I think it’s time to pay Mr. Davenport another visit.”

W ILL SUGGESTED C ALLING first, but Reyes thought it would be better if they caught him off guard. It was a golden afternoon—a Saturday, so they could be sure he was home. The house practically shimmered in the sun it was so white. Reyes had a feeling that if asked, Henry would say white was his favorite color.

The door opened, and Henry Davenport stood before them in a pressed shirt and slacks, a neat leather belt at his waist, black loafers on his feet.

“You going somewhere Mr. Davenport?” Reyes asked. “Did we catch you at a bad time?”

The man’s mouth fell open, but he quickly shut it. “No. I was just preparing to eat lunch. What can I do for you, officers?”

They had, as a matter of course, informed him that his wife’s body had yet to turn up. But Reyes assured him they had confirmed her jump from the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. “We’d like to take another look around if that’s okay. Maybe collect a few more items.”

“I don’t see why,” Henry spat. “She’s dead. You said so yourself. She jumped. Must we continue this charade of an investigation?”

Will took a step forward. “Mr. Davenport—may I call you Henry?—we’re just doing our jobs. We have a couple of small things we’d like to follow up on. Some… questions have arisen as to the nature of your wife’s death. Nothing to concern you, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t perform a routine follow-up. You understand?”

Will always had a way with the difficult ones. His baby face and Pillsbury Doughboy build made him appear softer than he really was. People tended to trust him, or at least feel less threatened. Reyes, on the other hand, ran three miles every morning and lifted in his time off. His square jaw signaled high testosterone and his eyes had a penetrating quality that made others uncomfortable, as if he could see through them. He’d been working on turning down the intensity of his personality to do his job more effectively, but pairing him with Will was one of the best decisions their chief of police had ever made.

“Questions?” Henry looked intrigued, his right eyebrow lifting.

Reyes saw an in. If they led him to believe they were investigating the possibility she wasn’t dead rather than the possibility she was murdered, he might be more forthcoming. “We can’t confirm anything just yet,” he said softly, almost in a whisper, like he was bringing the man in on a confidence. “But, between you and me, it’s entirely possible a body won’t turn up. We just… we need to investigate a little deeper to know for sure.”

Something behind the man’s eyes shifted, a flickering shadow that slithered away. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. The door swung wide. “Please, gentlemen. Come in,” he said.

Investigator Reyes stepped inside, interested to see so little had changed in the wife’s absence. As his partner talked the man up, Reyes walked through to the back of the house, drawn by the large picture windows. Sunlight poured into the room, but not a speck of dust could be seen. It wasn’t the interior of the house that interested Reyes though. His eyes were busy searching the backyard until he found what he was looking for. He didn’t even need to step outside to spot the brightly-colored stalks growing along the fence line, dripping with elongated clusters of shiny, dark berries—pokeweed.