Page 20 of The Bane Witch

20

Impound

Reyes had to admit, she’d caught him by surprise. He’d a hunch the post office box would yield something enlightening about the Davenport woman, perhaps a bank statement to a separate account or a medical bill suggesting an injury, but all his expectations were in the realm of mail. After all, that’s what post office boxes were for.

He took a step back and then another forward, shaking his head. Finally, he pulled out his nitrile gloves, dragging them onto his hands. Then, he grasped the only item in the PO box and brought it under the fluorescent lights. It was too thick and heavy to fit through the slot, which meant it was not delivered. She must have put it there. She had taken this box out solely to store this item.

It was wrapped in ruled notepad paper, held fast with a thick blue rubber band, a four-digit code scrawled across it. Unbinding it, he slipped the paper sleeve off, revealing an older model cell phone with the charging cord still attached. He pressed the power button, but the battery was dead.

Walking over to the counter, he smiled at the woman behind it. “Hi there, Cheryl. I need to come back and plug this in if that’s all right with you.”

She gave him a flat smile. “Suit yourself,” she said, lifting the counter for him to enter.

He quickly located an outlet and plugged the phone in, waiting a bit before he tried the power button again. This time, the screen flared to life and he entered the code on the paper. Several seconds later, he found himself staring at the home screen. The wallpaper was a photo of her with the husband, Henry, on what he assumed was their wedding day. There was no veil, but she appeared to be wearing white. Her smile was radiant, except for a slight dip on one side, causing her bottom lip to look crooked—a hallmark of a fixed smile, one held with effort as opposed to naturally given. He was smiling with a closed mouth, his lips pressing into each other, his eyes staring at some invisible point in the distance, as if she weren’t even beside him.

He checked the contacts and text messages, both were completely empty, scrubbed of whatever data they once contained. Reyes tried to slide to another screen, to look for any remaining apps beyond the most basic—games or video chats—anything that might explain why she hid this phone here, in a PO box her husband likely knew nothing about. But there was only one— photos.

With a hard swallow, he thumbed the image. A new screen flared to life. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. The first few were so close they were nearly featureless, but after a moment he could identify a cheekbone or a rib, a stretch of her neck, the inside of her thigh. Eventually, he reached several where part or all of her face could be seen. Each seemed to be documenting an injury. The eye was dotted with blood, the arm black with a jab or pinch, the throat wrapped in a collar of spectacular bruising, aubergine and greening at the edges, deep black spots where the fingers had dug in. In one, her eyelid was so puffy he almost couldn’t identify it; only her lashes gave it away. In another, the busted lip Henry’s assistant had told him about. They went on and on, each image automatically dated. Her neck being the most recent.

Reyes’s stomach turned. How many times had he seen injuries like these on his mother? How many baggies of ice had he gotten for her? How many mornings had he sat on the bathroom counter, helping her sponge makeup delicately over green or yellow skin? He remembered brushing her hair after each fight, after the tall man had stormed out in a rage, because it calmed her. And the sound of her sobs choking in her throat. The tremble of her shoulders. The smallness of his own hands, how powerless he felt, even as the rage simmered inside him with nowhere to go.

Mrs. Davenport was not his mother. He wasn’t even related to her. But they were connected in a different way, and Reyes felt that same fury building inside. He took a breath, reminded himself he was no longer powerless, and schooled himself against the desire to beat the living shit out of Henry Davenport. He had other ways to fight now.

The pictures were graphic and certainly compelling, but without the context, he didn’t know how much they might help him convict the man he believed had done this to her. Almost without thinking, he wadded the paper that had been circling the phone in his fist, the crunch of it against his palm reminding him to unroll it. He found her slanted writing staring up at him. He recognized it from the suicide letter, which a graphologist would be able to match conclusively, but if he had any doubts, she’d signed her whole name—Piers Corbin Davenport.

The letter read:

To whoever finds this:

This phone contains a series of photographs documenting my abuse at the hands of my husband, Henry Davenport, from October 2021 until June 2023. Please know, if you are holding this phone, reading this letter, then you are too late. Something terrible has happened. Henry has finally fulfilled his promise to me. Whatever he says about me, wherever he says I am, whatever he claims has happened or not happened, do not believe him. He is a liar and a bully. He is a killer. If I am missing, then I am dead. If my body has been recovered, know that he is to blame. I placed this phone here because I knew he was preparing to kill me—he’s threatened it many times—and I believe it’s the only way left to defend myself. The things you see in these images—he did those things to me… and worse. Take this and whatever else you can find and make him pay. But understand, Henry is a fastidious man. His hideaways will not be obvious. What you seek can only be found barking up the least expected tree.

Help a dead woman find justice.

Piers Corbin Davenport

Reyes stumbled back as the letter sunk in. This was circumstantial evidence still, not physical, but it was a doozy of an inference. It might not be enough on its own, but taken with the phone, with the footage from the bridge and the lab analysis of the plant matter found at the scene, on the letter, and in the yard, it was painting a devastating picture of abuse and foul play. If he were able to get his hands on some kind of material evidence that he could corroborate with this, something that concretely connected Henry to the scene at the bridge, he would have a rock-solid case.

Carefully, he wrapped the phone and letter how he found them, unplugging it from the post office wall. Making his way outside, he took a minute to just breathe. The sun was high and painfully bright, but its warmth on the back of his neck helped to settle his stomach. It didn’t matter how many years passed, domestic violence cases still had the power to weaken his knees and set his hands shaking. Suddenly, he was a little boy, crouched in the corner in his Batman underwear, watching the tall man choke the life out of his mother with no way to help her or himself.

Almost as a reflex, he pulled out his phone and dialed his sister.

“ Hermanito! ” she chirped on the line. “What’s shaking, baby brother?”

“You know I don’t like you to call me that,” he griped. He said it every time, though he never really meant it.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re a big, strong man now with a gun and everything. My hero!” she teased.

Reyes frowned. It had been part of their dynamic for as long as he could remember for Lucia to rib him while he feigned irritation. Secretly, he adored his sister and her affections. But today, her lighthearted words struck a little too close to home. The pictures on the phone still had him rattled, memories beckoning from the dark of his mind.

“Emil,” she barked when he didn’t respond. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he insisted. “Why do you think something is wrong?”

“Because you are breathing into the phone like someone has been chasing you. What’s your heart rate? Huh? Count it for me.”

Nurses, he thought with an eye roll. “My heart rate is fine.”

“Count!” she ordered. “Or start talking. One of the two.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s nothing just… I keep thinking of Mama.”

Losing their mother five years ago was hard on them both, but they dealt with it in different ways. Emil threw himself into his routine—work, run, eat, sleep—as if he could drive the grief out of his heart by staying busy. Lucia threw herself into church. She must have gone to mass more times in a week than there were days that first year. And even though he didn’t exactly share it, he admired her faith. It made her resilient.

“I see.” He could hear her deep inhale through the phone. “Is it another case?”

She knew him too well. “It started as a suicide,” he told her.

“ Started? ” Lucia was nearly as shockproof as he was. It seemed the Davenport woman had a special knack for knocking people off their guard.

He blew out. “I had this feeling, so I decided to dig a little deeper. Turns out, the husband had been abusing her. I just came across a phone full of pictures.”

“Breathe, hermanito, ” she said softly, understanding. “You aren’t back there in that house with the shag carpet. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

“I know,” he told her. “I know.”

“You can’t save them all, Emil,” she told him. “You have to learn to make your peace with that. It’s enough that you want to try.”

He walked toward his car, something catching in his throat. “This one feels different. It feels… important.”

“Why?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I know her, Lucia.”

His sister emitted a small squeak, then asked. “A girlfriend?”

Reyes dated plenty, but he rarely made strong connections to women. He’d had a couple of steady relationships, but they hadn’t lasted beyond a year, and he’d never brought anyone home, afraid of getting his mother’s hopes up. He liked keeping the pieces of his life neatly ensconced, separate from one another. It was cleaner. He wasn’t even sure he’d been in love, that he was capable of it. His sister said it was because of their childhood. But Reyes knew better. He understood the truth even if he couldn’t quite explain it. It’s like he was waiting on something, like his energy was being diverted, needed elsewhere for a task he hadn’t encountered yet. It sounded crazy, and that’s why he kept it to himself, but he just wasn’t fully available to a woman until that moment passed. A hero’s complex, a shrink had called it once. He didn’t go back. “No.”

She sighed and he could hear her resignation. “Who then?”

“ Her, ” he said emphatically. “The woman in the restaurant. The one who saved me from choking.”

There was an intake of air on the other end. “What? No. She’s dead?”

Reyes nodded even though she couldn’t see. “Yes, we think. But we haven’t found a body.” It was his turn to sigh. “I don’t know, Lucia. Something about this guy, her husband. He seems… worse. But not on the surface. On the surface, he’s polished. He sets my teeth on edge.”

“Polished just means sneakier,” she told him flatly. “Better at not getting caught. You remember Jace—country-club poster boy on the outside, sadistic asshole on the inside.”

“How could I forget?” Reyes climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. He still had nightmares where he beat the man’s skull in, unable to stop himself. Jace was Lucia’s last bad boyfriend, and by far the worst. Reyes had tried again and again to get her to leave him, until she stopped taking his calls. The night she finally phoned him from a motel room, her voice so low he could barely hear her, he worried he wouldn’t get to her in time, that she would die before he arrived or that Jace would come finish what he started. Reyes had a lifetime of bottled rage at men like Jace, men who had used and abused the women he loved, men who were so small inside they had to hurt someone smaller to escape their own misery. His niece, Mia, didn’t know her father, never would, and it was better that way.

But Jace was a small-time thug masquerading as a corporate square. Once you got past the porcelain veneers and the Ivy League haircut, it was obvious. Henry Davenport was a different beast—colder, crueler, leaner.

Reyes sighed. “This guy makes Jace look practically docile.”

“That’s terrifying,” Lucia replied. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” he told her. “I mean, nothing I can point a finger at except kill his wife and make it look like a suicide. But I can’t prove that. Not yet. He just feels wrong. ”

“Trust your gut, baby brother,” she told him. “It’s the gift God gave you.”

He pursed his lips. He didn’t know about that, but it did often lead him in the right direction.

“You said there’s no body?” his sister asked, her tone ranging higher in hope.

“Not yet. It’s probably in the Atlantic.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” she said. “Men like Jace, like this man—they’re proud of their work. Too proud, if you ask me, to let it go unseen. Jace left me where someone would find me. He wanted the cops to know there was nothing they could do to stop him. If you don’t have a body, she might not be dead. There might still be time, baby brother. I know she’s important to you.”

“What are you saying? That he’s keeping her somewhere? Alive? Like a prisoner?” A scoff escaped him.

“If he is, it won’t be for long,” she suggested. “Or maybe she ran away. Maybe he’s too ashamed to let people know she got away from him, that’s he’s not all-powerful.”

“We have a suicide note,” he told her.

“Maybe he wrote it.”

Reyes shook his head. It was too convoluted. The truth was usually simple, the simplest thing staring you in the face. “We have footage of her jumping off a bridge.”

“Then maybe she’s finally free,” his sister said sadly. “The only way to get an asshole like that off your back is if they think you’re dead. I should know.”

Reyes flinched. Lucia believed Jace had never come looking for her because he didn’t think she’d survived that last beating. That’s what allowed her to sleep at night. That, and the nine-millimeter she kept tucked under her mattress. A present he’d given her for Mia’s first Christmas.

Her words burrowed into him. “I gotta go,” he told her, feeling a powerful urge to return to the residence. He had to be missing something. Something that would nail this guy.

“Emil?” she said before he could hang up.

“Yes, Lucia?”

“Be careful. If this man is as bad as you think, then he’s more dangerous than you or I could ever imagine.”

“I WAN T HIS car.” Reyes dumped the cell phone and note onto Will’s desk.

“What?” His partner nearly spilt the coffee he was slurping. “What’s all this?”

“That,” Reyes told him, “was in the PO box.”

“A crappy old cell phone?” Will didn’t look impressed.

Reyes reached over with a sigh of exasperation and plugged it into the outlet on Will’s cubicle. He entered the passcode, then dropped it in his lap. “Turn it on.”

Will looked from him to the phone. Setting his coffee down, he did as he was told. The screen flared to life, the image of the happy couple. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing on here.”

“The photos,” Reyes told him. “Look at the photos, man.”

As his partner scrolled through image after horrifying image, Reyes watched Will’s face move from confused to shocked to disgusted. “He did these things to her?” he finally asked.

Reyes handed him the note in answer.

Will read it through the plastic bag, then set it carefully on his desk. He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. “Why his car?”

“Think about it,” Reyes began, which is exactly what he had been doing from the post office to the station, the wife’s words— His hideaways will not be obvious —pestering him mile after mile alongside his sister’s. “Right now, we have circumstantial evidence. We have some physical evidence, too, but nothing that concretely puts him on that bridge. Just a fuzzy video that a judge is just as likely to throw out as admit based on insufficiency. If we find one thing that draws a line between these dots, we’ll have him.”

“And you believe that one thing is in his car?” Will asked skeptically.

Reyes cocked a brow. “Where’s the first place he went after forcing her off that bridge?”

“I don’t know. To work?” Will suggested half-heartedly.

“Yes, but how did he get there? He didn’t walk. He didn’t take the bus. That guy has probably never seen the inside of public transportation in his life. His assistant said he came in late that morning because of a flat, and we saw the spare tire on his car. So where was he between the bridge and his office?”

“In his car,” Will supplied, finally seeing what Reyes was driving at.

“So,” Reyes went on, “I want that car.”

Will leaned back and crossed his hands over his belly. “Good luck getting it. He’s not cooperating anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Reyes asked. “He seemed real interested in what we had to say the last time we were there.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he lawyered up. I don’t know. We’ve asked several times for him to come down for more questioning and he’s refused. Up to this point, everything has been voluntary. He doesn’t even know he’s a suspect or that we saw that footage. So, as far as he can tell, he’s not obligated to do a thing more,” Will explained calmly.

“Dammit.” Reyes pounded the desk. “I thought we were careful not to tip him off, because we wanted his cooperation. The second he clams up, this case gets a thousand times harder to prove.”

Will shrugged. “He’s smart. And guilty. It’s a tricky combination.”

Reyes gripped the edge of his partner’s desk and leaned into it, thinking.

“Look,” Will said, “if he’s already suspicious, then what difference does it make? You’re not going to get anything else out of him without a warrant, certainly not his car. So, let’s impound it.”

“Do we have enough to do that?” Reyes asked.

Will held up the phone he brought from the post office. “This is probable cause, Emil. That video is probable cause. The labs on the berries in the yard and the ones from the bridge. We have enough to take his car. If we find something in it, then we go for an indictment, a warrant on the house and office, seize his computers and anything else we think might button this up.”

Reyes blew out a long breath. “Once we take his car… that’s a point of no return with this guy.”

Will pursed his lips. “I think we’re already there. Might as well cuff him and stuff him in the process.”

Reyes pinched his lips together and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

T HEY WERE AT his office parking lot the next day. It had rained that morning, but the sun was a mellow presence now, lighting the city up in soft beams. Reyes was glad the sun was out. He didn’t want anyone in Henry’s office to miss this. This small show of force, the ability to catch a man like Henry Davenport off his guard, to embarrass him publicly —it was personal for Reyes. He saw himself sticking it to the tall man every time he took one of these bastards down. And it felt good.

He shook the tow-truck driver’s hand as the man lowered the wheel-lift to secure the sleek, black Jaguar. The nice thing to do would be to go inside and inform Mr. Davenport what was happening. But Reyes wasn’t interested in being nice to men like Henry Davenport.

“You sure about this?” Will asked, turning to him.

Reyes smiled. “He’s gonna know one way or another. Might as well inform everyone else in the process. Let them know they’re employing someone who commits uxoricide.”

Will’s face scrunched up. “Commits what now?”

“A scumbag wife-killer,” Reyes explained, and his partner nodded.

Reyes tapped the tow truck guy on the shoulder. “No need for a gentle touch with this one,” he told him. “And be loud.”

The guy grinned and gave him a single head nod. Walking over to his cab, he switched on the sirens.

Will laughed and did the same from their patrol car. Before they knew it, people were lining up at the glass walls of the building, staring out at the spectacle in the parking lot.

By the time the Jaguar was loaded and secured, Henry Davenport was storming across the concrete toward them, his face a red mask of fury, fingers clenched into fists at his sides.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he spat. “This is my place of business.”

“We’re impounding your car,” Reyes told him, stepping up to the engineer’s tall frame. He enjoyed watching the man’s face slip into a pall of bewilderment.

“Why? What right have you to do that?” he asked, still furious.

“Oh,” Will said, stepping between them. “Maybe you didn’t notice. You see, we’re the law. We have every right.”

Henry took a step toward Will and Reyes interceded. “Refusing to comply with a police officer is a misdemeanor. We can Miran dize you right now, if you like. In front of all these fine people watching at the windows.”

Stomping his foot, Henry spun around and ran his fingers through his pale hair, visibly at the edge of his self-control. When he turned back, he had somewhat composed himself, cheek color moving from beet to tomato. “First, you do nothing to locate my wife. Then you harass me in my home with your inane questions and needless searches. And now this.” His eyes darted to his car being raised on the wheel-lift. “I’m calling my attorney. You will both deeply regret this day,” he growled.

“You do that,” Will told him. He patted the trunk of the Jaguar. “And we’ll give this baby a real thorough search. I imagine by the time we’re done, you’re going to need that attorney.”

Henry took a dumbfounded step back. For a second, Reyes thought they were getting a glimpse of the real man. A man who was unused to surprises. For a guilty man, he seemed genuinely taken aback, as if he had no understanding of how he’d arrived at this particular moment, watching his car be hauled away by police in front of an audience of his peers.

There was something about a man like Henry caught off guard that made Reyes’s blood run cold even as his chest puffed with pride. Cornering a man like that came with a level of risk. He reassured himself it was one he was willing to take. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, and he had the build to crush a man like Henry in a fight any day. But men like Henry never fought fair, if they fought at all. If he chose to strike back, Reyes was likely to never see it coming.

“This is absurd,” he told them. “You won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find! My wife—my wife…” Suddenly, his face slackened, his eyes and cheeks losing focus.

“Your wife is dead,” Reyes told him. “And we don’t have a body, despite our best efforts. But we have a few other things, things you might prefer kept private, things a man like you wouldn’t want falling into the hands of the police.” He moved toward Henry, determined and angry.

“That’s enough,” Will said, placing a hand on Emil’s shoulder in warning. He turned to Henry. “Now, you can give us your keys, or we can pry these doors open with a crowbar. Your pick.”

Henry glowered and threw his keys at Will’s feet before they turned to leave.

Reyes had said too much, but it didn’t matter. The wheels of justice were in motion, and not even Henry Davenport could stop them. They drove away behind the tow truck and the impotent Jaguar, watching him grow smaller in the rearview mirror.

W HEN R EYES GOT to the impound lot the next morning, Will was already there, looking incredulous as he wiped his fingers on a garage towel.

“It’s clean,” he told him.

“What?” Reyes couldn’t believe his ears. “What do you mean it’s clean?”

Will shook his head. “I mean there’s nothing there. The guy’s a squeaker. He’s meticulous.”

“That can’t be true.” Reyes pulled on a set of gloves, opened the back passenger door, and leaned inside. “Did you check behind panels? Under the center console? Inside the fuse box and spare tire? Shit like that?”

Will rubbed a hand over his stomach while he nodded. “I’m telling you, we made a mistake.”

Reyes stepped out of the car and faced his partner over the top of the door. “We did not make a mistake, Will. This guy is guilty.”

“Then he’s a professional because there’s nothing inside that car.”

“What about outside?” Reyes asked moving around to the trunk.

“Obviously I checked there,” Will said with a frown. “Even preschoolers know that.”

Reyes circled to the driver-side door. He opened it and pulled the safety lever for the hood, walking around to slide his fingers beneath the front and pop the latch, raising the hood to look underneath. Will joined him.

“I’ve been over it more than once, Emil.” There was a note of apology in his voice. “Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe it’s not what we think.”

“Just… let me look,” he said, trying to bite back his temper. He refused to give up on the Davenport woman. He would deliver her the justice she deserved. There must be a reason he’d been called to this case.

He spent the next forty minutes combing that car for anything remotely out of place, anything admissible as evidence. But like his partner, he came up empty-handed. There wasn’t even a bit of lint on the floor mat or spare change in the cup holders. He finished back where he started, slamming the hood closed as he cursed.

“It’s not here,” Will told him as Reyes stepped away from the Jaguar. “Maybe he scrubbed it. He beat us.”

But Reyes couldn’t abide that. “We’re not giving it back.”

Will looked stupefied. “Uh… We have to give the man his car back, Emil. You know that.”

“Not yet,” Reyes snapped. He walked around the vehicle one more time, studying it, asking himself, if he were a violent psychopath with a brilliant tactician’s mind and a murder to cover up, where would he hide his evidence? He tapped his chin, an idea beginning to form. The second-to-last line from the letter hammering at his brain— What you seek can only be found barking up the least expected tree. “We need a dog.”

“I’m sorry?” Will asked.

Reyes turned to him, hands on hips. “A canine unit. A sniffer.”

Will looked exasperated. “We don’t even know what we’re searching for.”

“Yes, we do,” Reyes told him. “Give him the pokeweed and that dog will tell us where the evidence is in this car.”

Will didn’t look convinced, but he was staring at Reyes with less concern than a moment ago. “We’ll get the dog,” he said after a moment. “But if the dog says the car is clean, then it is.”

“Deal,” Reyes agreed.

They had their canine unit—a German shepherd named Glover—by that afternoon. Used to sniffing out cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine, Glover had a glowing track record for everything from narcotics to cadavers to missing children. His handler, Deborah, insisted he could find a rat turd in a barrel full of coffee grinds if she asked him to. She held the berries they’d taken from the Davenport residence in front of him in one hand, while her other was fisted around some treats. Every time he sniffed the berries, she rewarded him. In no time, they’d moved on to placing the berries inside a box that she set on the ground. After a few rounds where Glover correctly indicated the box and got his reward, she felt confident moving on to the car. She let Glover sniff the berries a final time, then passed them to Will, leading the dog to the Jaguar.

“You guys stand back,” she told them. “Let him work.”

Will leaned over and whispered in Reyes’s ear. “This better work.”

Reyes swallowed. In truth, he didn’t know if he was chasing a shadow or if he was really onto something. He’d felt so confident before, but the car search had him rattled. For once, he prayed the way he’d often heard his sister do, begging God for a break. Please, God, and he added at the end, don’t let this asshole win.

Just then, shrill barking rang out. Glover had reached the side of the car behind the front passenger-side tire and his tail wagged frantically as he indicated the spot again and again.

“Gotcha,” Reyes whispered.

Beside him, Will’s arms fell to his side. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Deborah gave the dog a treat and called them over. “It’s here,” she told them. “No question.”

Reyes raised the hood and studied the area near where the dog had gotten so excited. The cap for the windshield wiper fluid reservoir caught his eye. Lifting the container, he leaned over to look inside. “Bingo,” he told his partner and the handler. “We got the bastard.”

They used some long-handled tongs they rustled up from a nearby grill store to wiggle it free. When they finally got the whole thing out, Reyes couldn’t believe his eyes. The ziplock bag had been tightly rolled around whatever was inside, all the air squeezed out so it would fit. Emil laid the bag on the ground.

“Open it!” Will insisted.

Reyes glanced up at him, then carefully split the seam, opening the bag and pulling the item out. It was dark, black, probably cotton fabric with a single zipper. He shook it free and held it up for him and Will to see, feeling his stomach drop as he registered what they were looking at.

“The black hoodie,” Will said with awe.

“Is that what you boys were after?” Deborah asked them.

“Oh, yeah,” Reyes told her. “This is exactly what we were after.”

He checked the right pocket. Inside was a paper towel wadded around several dried berries.