Dominance, page 3
Blackburn advanced on them methodically, heels striking out a rhythm that cut through ambient noise. Sunlight flared on her badge as she lifted it. Unnecessary here but performed anyway, a warning more than identification.
“The investigation wrapped about an hour ago,” Gupta offered quickly, standing straighter as if posture alone could shield him from her scrutiny. His words threaded thinly through static air.
DeAngelo shrugged off his own tension with indifference. “Everything’s bagged and logged. Just waiting for your say-so to clear the scene.”
She let silence stretch between them, a wire drawn tight, watching them squirm under her gaze. Her mouth curved at one corner. Not a smile but satisfaction in their discomfort, control asserted without effort.
“You’ll leave when I tell you,” she said at last, her voice cool steel, finality ringing in every word. No argument followed. She turned away before either could muster one. “I have things to review first.”
They exchanged wary glances but remained rooted to their spot, her reputation preceding her like a shadow cast ahead of dusk. This accident should have been theirs to manage, but she had claimed it utterly. Now even their breath seemed borrowed on her ground.
What lay before her was aftermath masquerading as absence. No body broken on blacktop, no blood blooming across concrete, just wet pavement scoured nearly clean by the intervention of high pressure water. A hollowed stage where chaos had played itself out and left only residue. Faint scorch marks etched into asphalt. Puddles pooled in cracks where water refused to drain away. The metallic tang of burned rubber and copper stubborn in the air despite everything washed down.
The fire department’s efficiency had erased more than evidence. It had stripped meaning from the scene until nothing remained but stains dissolving beneath indifferent sunlight.
Her jaw tightened, a flicker of anger barely reined in, as she surveyed what little survived. Fragments where there should have been clues, silence where there should have been answers.
“DeAngelo.” Her voice cracked across the distance, sharp enough to startle him upright.
He approached swiftly, boots sending ripples through the mirrored sky in shallow puddles. “Detective Blackburn.” He tried for composure but couldn’t quite mask the edge in his tone.
She didn’t look at him right away. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ruined asphalt and what it failed to yield. When she spoke again, it was low and threatening. A thread stretched taut over simmering fury.
“Who authorized Fire to hose down my scene?”
He shifted his weight, a child caught mid-transgression. “Sgt. Beckett gave clearance,” he said finally, voice cautious. “It was called an accident at first. Standard protocol for vehicle fires.”
Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails bit flesh as if pain could anchor the rage that threatened to spill over. The scene was lost, evidence swept away by routine carelessness, and yet she felt its absence gnawing inside her, hollow and irretrievable.
She stood there a moment longer, the sun at her back, city noise receding, alone with what remained, control slipping through her fingers like water pooling in cracks too deep to fill.
“An accident,” she repeated, her voice pared to a blade, slicing through the damp hush between them. Her gaze swept the asphalt. Slick, bruised beneath the streetlights, as if she could conjure from its sheen what violence had been washed away.
She nodded once, curt and final. “Thank you.” The words were clipped, already receding as she turned. A dismissal DeAngelo could not mistake. He lingered in her wake, posture caving under her restraint, then drifted back to his post, carrying her unspoken verdict in his slumped shoulders.
A cluster of offerings pressed against the curb ahead. Pale chrysanthemums drooped in cellophane, candles sputtering in the morning’s uncertain breeze. Wax pooled at their bases, scent mingling with exhaust and rain. Handwritten notes curled at the edges, grief rendered in ink and smudged thumbprints. Blackburn slowed as she approached. Not a hesitation but an adjustment of pace, as if calibrating herself to the gravity that clung here.
A woman kneeled at the heart of it. Mid-fifties, denim jacket worn thin at the elbows and cuffs. Her hands shook as she coaxed flame from a match. It flared briefly, then steadied into a small persistent light. She withdrew a cream-colored bear from her bag, a child’s relic, incongruous and tender) and nestled it among the tokens. Her lips moved in silent ritual before she straightened, catching sight of Blackburn’s approach.
The woman rose stiffly, clutching her bag tightly against her ribs. Her eyes flickered with something beyond sorrow. An appetite for secrets. “Terrible thing,” she murmured, voice pitched low for confidences that never quite reached daylight. “A girl like that… They say one of those men did it.” She leaned closer, breath tinged with coffee and nerves. “Money changes hands. Police look the other way.”
Blackburn’s laugh came sharp, a fracture through the mourning air. Her mouth curled. Not quite amusement, more an exposure of teeth than intent to comfort. She met the woman’s stare without blinking. “I am the police,” she said, smooth edges over steel. “Detective Blackburn. No one’s bought me.”
Color flooded the woman’s cheeks. Her hands fluttered over her knees, brushing at invisible grit. “Sorry, Detective, I didn’t mean. It’s just…” She trailed off, gaze darting sideways toward safety.
“I know how stories grow legs,” Blackburn replied, voice modulating to something almost gentle, a calculated slackening of tension as she stepped closer into the shared space. “What else do they say?”
The woman glanced over one shoulder before speaking again, a whisper meant for conspirators alone. “The candle shop clerk heard things, from an IT guy who knew before it happened.” She gestured down the block to the storefronts glinting under dew-laced neon.
Blackburn let silence settle between them. Approval or skepticism unreadable in the faint lift at one corner of her mouth. She offered a perfunctory thanks and pivoted away, leaving both shrine and rumor behind.
Her stride gathered purpose as she moved toward the intersection where new glass fronts warred with peeling brickwork. Order and entropy vying for dominion along a single block.
At a bus stop bench shattered by neglect (splinters jutting like exposed bone), she paused. The disorder felt pointed. A challenge embedded in debris. Her gaze tracked upward. A security camera blinked red above a doorway, its cyclopean eye recording everything and nothing.
She stopped before Coconut Glass Candles, the boutique’s window scrubbed to surgical clarity despite last night’s rain. Inside, rows of coconut wax candles arranged like trophies of serenity, their surfaces flawless and cold beneath LED spillover. Crystals clustered on mossy trays, amethyst veined with shadow, citrine catching stray light like sugar on broken pavement. Incense sticks waited in bronze holders shaped like open palms.
At the center, a sign floated above it all. “Illuminate Naturally,” the script lush but brittle around its edges, garlanded with dried petals that bled color onto glass.
To Blackburn, it read less invitation than performance. A tableau curated for those who craved meaning prepackaged in scent and stone. She pictured customers pressing anxious faces to glass, seeking absolution in quartz or wax. A hunger for order disguised as ritual.
She exhaled through her nose, a sound almost too soft for derision, and shook her head once.
“Artisanal hope,” she muttered under her breath. Even so, something pulled at her. A reluctant curiosity about whatever narrative this place might offer up about blood on concrete and secrets traded after dark. Aliens? Bigfoot? Anything seemed possible beneath such polished calm.
She stepped forward into her own reflection fractured by sunlight across glass, and waited for someone inside to notice who was watching whom.
Blackburn’s voice sliced through the thin morning haze as she angled herself toward Reeves, who lingered across the street. “Reeves! Note every camera along these blocks,” she called, tone clipped, eyes already scanning for blind spots. “Get IT down here to pull all the relevant footage.”
Reeves, his navy slacks rumpled and shoes scuffing against the curb, lifted a hand in loose acknowledgment. He moved with the distracted air of someone searching for caffeine rather than evidence.
Blackburn didn’t wait for him. She strode to her sedan, the city’s chill still clinging to its metal skin. The trunk groaned open beneath her hand. She sifted through its contents with speed, a shuffle of paper, the crackle of maps and files marked with Traffic Services Division sigils. Langston v. Unknown—Case CCTR-02412. The stamp bled red in the hard light.
She thumbed through incident reports, sunlight flaring off white pages and forcing her to squint. She wanted to reread an important entry. Its brevity was at odds with what it suggested.
Witness: Marla Sutton (F/30), phone 555-7831.
Friend of victim.
Arrived Oak Street approx. 06:50 after call from Jenna Langston; pickup request logged at 06:15; call missed at 06:45. Witness highly distressed—preliminary questioning incoherent (see Officer Baylor #4427). Follow-up recommended pending timeline clarification.
Note: Witness supplied full name—Jenna Langston (F/28).
Officer B. Baylor #4427
Traffic Services
A flicker of recognition. This was the woman who had held Jenna’s phone during that final call. She needed to call before anyone else did.
Her hand closed around her phone, thumb hovering over Marla’s number. The word “incoherent” echoed in her mind, sharp and unsettling. Voice calls left traces she couldn’t control, a text offered cleaner lines, a record if chaos followed.
She composed each word with care
Hi Marla. This is Detective Morgan Blackburn, New Dresden Police.<
I’m investigating Jenna Langston’s death<
I would like to speak with you as soon as possible.<
Please call me when you can.<
She sent it, a silent transmission into uncertainty, and slipped the phone into her pocket. Her gaze drifted back to the files, restless now, unable to settle on any single detail as thoughts tumbled behind her exterior.
The phone buzzed, a sudden jolt against her thigh. Screen lit: 555-7831.
She answered reflexively, voice low but unmistakably firm. “Detective Blackburn.”
A breath crackled over the line before words formed, fragile but urgent. “Detective? It’s Marla. You just texted me.” Relief broke through Marla’s voice like sun through cloud cover. “Thank God someone finally reached out.”
Blackburn modulated her tone, steadying it with an undercurrent of assurance meant to anchor them both. “I apologize for the delay,” she said, letting each syllable land with intent. “Now that I’m here, things will move forward.”
On the other end, silence stretched thin by shallow breathing, the sound of someone holding themselves together by force of will.
“You’re…you’re the detective Jenna met that night?” Marla’s voice trembled at the edge of composure.
“I am,” Blackburn replied without pause, stone steady but edged with something softer beneath. “I didn’t know Jenna well, but even briefly, she stood out.” She let that statement hang between them. It needed no embellishment.
A hush settled. A void filled only by Marla’s uneven breaths and distant city noise bleeding into Blackburn’s ear. Traffic murmurs, a dog barking somewhere beyond sightline, morning light glancing off glass and chrome.
“Thank you,” Marla whispered finally.
Blackburn leaned against cold steel, the car grounding her as memory flickered behind her eyes. Jenna moaning in one moment, threatening in another.
“I take this case seriously,” she said gently but without compromise. Her words were both shields and promises. “Jenna deserved better.”
Another pause. A fragile quiet laced with everything unsaid.
“She was…” Marla started and faltered. Grief thickened her voice until it nearly failed her. “…one-of-a-kind.”
Blackburn watched a man in headphones drift past, oblivious. An autonomous taxi slid by in silence. A golden retriever strained against its leash. Life was moving on in defiance of loss.
“Tell me what happened that morning,” Blackburn prompted softly but firmly, drawing Marla back from memory into this necessary present. Marla hadn’t given her the impression that Jenna had complained to her.
Marla exhaled shakily, the sound raw but determined now as she began again. “Jenna called early…she sounded upset…asked me to pick her up at Oak and Maple.”
“Upset? Did she say why?” Blackburn asked, her pen already poised above a fresh page in her notebook, mind cataloguing every inflection for what it might reveal or conceal.
“No,” Marla conceded, irritation threading her voice. “She said she’d explain everything once I got there.”
Blackburn paused mid-note, pen hovering just above the paper. “Did someone upset her?” Her tone was almost gentle. Bait wrapped in silk.
Marla’s breath sharpened. “I don’t know. She didn’t say anything before I arrived.” The words came out brittle, frustration barely masked.
Blackburn leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them until the air vibrated with her attention. “Think carefully. Did Jenna ever mention anyone following her? Anyone making her uneasy?”
A silence settled between them, heavy, expectant. Marla hesitated, eyes darting away as if searching for an answer in some distant memory. When she finally spoke, her voice had shrunk to a hush. “No… Jenna never told me anything like that. If something was wrong, she would have—”
Blackburn’s gaze remained fixed, unreadable as she scrawled a note, her hand steady, precise. She shifted tactics without warning. “Do you have a list of online names she used? I want to check her public social media. There may be something there.”
Marla let out a short laugh, brittle as glass fracturing on tile. “She was on a dozen dating apps. It was usually a variation of her name. JennaL, Langston, JennaLaLa.”
The corner of Blackburn’s mouth twitched, an aborted smile or a grimace, impossible to tell. She let the moment hang before speaking again, voice low. “Listen closely.” Each word landed with surgical precision. “This stays between us.” Silence pressed in, thick enough to taste.
Blackburn’s eyes locked onto Marla’s, unblinking. “Jenna confided in me last night,” she said softly, professional vulnerability carefully modulated for effect. “She said someone was watching her, following her to my house.” The statement hung in the air, weighted with implication.
Marla’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an almost perfect O.
“I took it seriously,” Blackburn continued after a beat, voice steady but edged with something colder than concern. “I went out myself, with my service weapon, and checked every inch around my place. Nothing concrete turned up.”
Another pause, sharp as a scalpel.
“I’m telling you because I need to know if Jenna ever mentioned feeling watched or threatened to you.” The question cut closer now.
Marla’s breath caught audibly, a thin gasp that betrayed more than words could manage. “No,” she whispered at last. “Nothing like that. Are you sure she saw someone?”
Blackburn let the silence linger just long enough to unsettle before replying in an even tone. “That’s what she told me. I’m trying to piece things together.” Her pen hovered again, poised for the next move. “Is there anything else, anything at all, you think I should know?”
Hesitation thickened on the line. Marla’s reply came slowly and uncertainly. “There’s one thing… I missed a call from Jenna this morning. Early, about 6:45, but she hung up before I answered.”
Blackburn angled the phone against her shoulder, notepad ready beneath her hand. Her handwriting slashed across the page in careful strokes. “Exactly 6:45?”
“Wait,” Marla murmured faintly, the sound of fingers flicking over glass and distant electronic pings filling the gap between words. “No. It was 6:48.”
“Did it go to voicemail?” Blackburn asked, the question clipped and cool.
“No message,” Marla answered quietly now.
Check outgoing calls to 555-7831. Blackburn wrote and underlined it once with finality.
She recalibrated her tone, softening just enough to feign concern while keeping Marla tethered close. “I need you to be certain. Did Jenna ever hint at someone watching her? Anyone odd at work? An ex who wouldn’t let go?”
Marla kept her voice steady this time. “No… nothing like that.” A note of defensiveness crept in now, as if repeating it might make it true.
Blackburn nodded almost imperceptibly, committing details to memory as much as to paper, and circled another note on her pad for emphasis. “Thank you,” she said smoothly, warmth slipping into her voice like oil over water. She left a pause hanging there, a silent demand for trust before continuing. “I’ll need your address too. A detective may follow up if we require more information.”
Marla recited it without hesitation. Blackburn jotted it down with swift efficiency and ended the call with reassurance. A soft closure meant to linger long after the line went dead.
Only then did Blackburn lean back, gaze skimming over her notes while a faint smirk played at her lips, a private signal of satisfaction.
Information gathered cleanly. Nothing too specific that couldn’t be shaped later if needed. And now Marla sat neatly positioned as an unwitting ally should Internal Affairs come sniffing for cracks.
Perfect.
Chapter 3
The bell above the door gave a muted chime as Blackburn entered, its tone dissolving into the hush within. Warmth pressed in at once. Sandalwood, vanilla, a filament of clove threading through the air. Candlelight pooled on honeyed wood, glancing off glass jars and polished stones. Shelves bore their burden with careful pride. Candles in every shade, crystals stacked like fragments of ice, incense sticks aligned so precisely they might have been measured. The shop was a confection of order and invitation, but for Blackburn it felt staged, a softness she distrusted on sight. She kept her expression flat, though a muscle ticked at her jaw.
