Drop Dead Crime: Mystery and Suspense from the Leading Ladies of Murder Page 3

  Caleb reached over and stroked Olivia’s hair. “Let her sleep a few minutes. Then I’ll carry her back to her room.”

  Jocelyn had raised Olivia from an infant, taking over her care from her sister Camille—then a drug addict—when Olivia was only seven days old. It had been Jocelyn and Olivia alone with only the help of Jocelyn’s best friend, Inez, and Inez’s mother until Olivia turned five and Caleb came along. Jocelyn’s fears that Olivia would be resistant to having a man in their lives—besides fun Uncle Kevin and Jocelyn’s own uncle, Simon Wilde—were unfounded. She loved Caleb instantly. Sometimes, Jocelyn suspected that Olivia loved Caleb even more than Jocelyn did. The two had quickly become inseparable, and Caleb, having already raised a son who was now in college, had all kinds of parenting tricks up his sleeve, which Jocelyn was only too happy to put into action. Now, whenever Caleb stayed over, Olivia climbed into bed between them. Sometimes in the middle of the night and sometimes, like tonight, before she had even been to her own bed.

  “You feel okay?” Caleb asked.

  “Sore back,” Jocelyn said as she got into bed on the other side of Olivia. She planted a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “That woman today—the jumper—she had a little boy. Just a baby.”

  “I know,” Caleb said. He pointed toward the television. “The news caught wind of it.”

  Jocelyn fished the remote from the tangle of sheets and turned the sound up, a smile stretching across her face.

  She felt his eyes boring into her. He said, “What did you do?”

  She waved him off. “Shhh. I want to hear this.”

  Lights from the press cameras cast a harsh glare on Evan Porter as he stood on the Schuylkill riverbank, flanked by two uniformed police officers. He was taking questions from reporters. Although Jocelyn couldn’t hear the questions, his responses were clear, thanks to all the microphones thrust into his face. “No, no. She wasn’t depressed. I don’t know why my wife did this. It’s unlike her. We have a son at home, Christopher, a beautiful, little baby.” He paused, eyes cast down, as though he were getting choked up. He faced the cameras again with glistening eyes. “She would never leave our son. Not like this.”

  Another question. He answered, “I don’t know where she was coming from.”

  More shouts. Another response. “I don’t think her jumping had anything to do with the accident. It was a fender bender, from what I’ve been told.”

  It went on, but Jocelyn had stopped listening. He wouldn’t be offering any new information anyway. The news cut back to the studio where the anchor told viewers that the police would continue to search through the night. She felt Caleb’s gaze on her again.

  “You called the press?” he asked incredulously.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Jocelyn, what the hell for?”

  She met his eyes. “People don’t just decide to jump off a bridge because they got into a fender bender. That woman—” The newscast flashed a photo, which had likely been provided by Evan, of Molly on her wedding day, because Molly Porter didn’t have a Facebook page. Jocelyn had already checked. She picked up the remote and paused the newscast. Molly Porter’s face filled the screen, smiling at them, her blonde hair pulled up in the front and then cascading in ringlets over her shoulders. She was beautiful. Stunning, really. Staring at the photo, Jocelyn noticed a light-brown birthmark on Molly’s right cheek that she hadn’t noticed on the bridge. It was close to her jawbone, and if her head hadn’t been angled slightly, it wouldn’t be visible. It was almost star-shaped.

  Jocelyn continued. “Something was going on with her. Something that bears investigating.”

  Caleb raised a brow. “So, you feel guilty. Help me out here: she hit you, gave Anita a concussion and you a sore back, and you’re blaming yourself because she jumped off a bridge?”

  “She has a little boy, Caleb. A baby.”

  “Even people with kids can be suicidal.”

  Jocelyn looked down at Olivia again. She knew he was right. She’d seen it on the job. Being a parent didn’t solve all your mental health issues. Jocelyn couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more going on.

  “Maybe she was doing something wrong,” Caleb challenged, although his tone was calm. Playing the devil’s advocate. “Maybe she was having an affair and didn’t want anyone to find out. Maybe that’s why she jumped.”

  “An affair is a possibility,” Jocelyn conceded, “a probability even. But I’m not sure if it’s a reason to kill yourself. Whatever it was that she was doing on Tuesdays was about to be found out, and Molly Porter would rather die than face the consequences of whatever she was doing.”

  Caleb looked at the screen, studying Molly’s face. “Jocelyn, I’m not sure this is a situation that you can fix.”

  “I’m not trying to fix it.”

  “Then it’s not a case you can solve. Actually, it’s not even a case you can investigate. You were personally involved.”

  “But I—” She started to speak, but he was leaping out of bed, walking closer to the television.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I have to go in,” he said, searching for the jeans he’d strewn on the floor earlier.

  “Go into work?” she asked, perplexed.

  “It’s about Molly Porter,” he said, gesturing toward the screen. “I think I’ve seen her before. Can you find this photo online and screenshot it to me?”

  Jocelyn picked up her phone. “Sure,” she said. “But you better call me the moment you find what you’re looking for.”

  ~~~

  Caleb woke her at three a.m. Olivia still snored beside her. Jocelyn got out of bed and followed him downstairs to the kitchen, eyes bleary with fatigue. Her back ached with every step.

  “I’m obsessed,” she told him. “But this could have waited until morning.”

  He sat at the table. “Well, yes, it could, but I don’t want to risk Olivia overhearing any of it.”

  Jocelyn folded herself into a chair across from him. “That bad, huh?”

  But of course she had known it would be bad. Caleb worked for the Special Victims Unit. Their focus was on sexual assault and other crimes against children and the elderly. Quite honestly, Jocelyn wasn’t sure how he could stomach it, even though she knew it was a vitally important job.

  He placed his phone in the front of him. “You know we work a lot of child porn cases, right?”

  She covered her stomach, suddenly feeling nauseated. “Oh Jesus.”

  “There’s a video called the ‘Star’ video. It’s been circulating for years. We’re talking long before streaming was a thing. A lot of law enforcement divisions that work child porn cases are aware of it. It’s one of those videos that used to be... well, as my boss always says, ‘extremely popular among child porn enthusiasts.’ What we might think of today as viral. Basically, if you caught a guy with child porn in his house, he had a copy of the ‘Star’ video.”

  Jocelyn grimaced. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. I mean, like I said, this was before streaming, so we don’t find it much anymore, but it’s pretty well-known. Anyway, no one has ever been able to locate the girl in the video. She’s maybe twelve or thirteen. In a hotel room. There are... several men. In the video, she says her name is Star. That’s why it’s called the ‘Star’ video.”

  Jocelyn said, “Let me guess, she calls herself Star because of the birthmark on her cheek. The star-shaped birthmark.”

  Caleb shrugged. “We have no way of knowing why she chose to call herself Star, but yeah, she has a star-shaped birthmark on her right cheek. That’s actually how I recognized her. Its shape is very distinctive.”

  “Molly Porter is Star. Was Star.”

  Caleb swiped the screen on his phone. Jocelyn held up a hand to block her view of it. “Please,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You know I couldn’t show it to you anyway. It’s just a screenshot of her face. That’s all.”

 
; He turned the phone toward her. The image was grainy and dark, but the brown, star-shaped birthmark on the young girl’s right cheek, near her jawline, was unmistakable. In fact, in the screen grab Caleb had taken, it looked darker than in Molly Porter’s wedding photo. Jocelyn wondered if it had faded over time or if Molly had made a point of trying to cover it with makeup whenever possible.

  “We think that Star was a prostitute,” Caleb went on. “This video has been circulating for nearly twenty years.”

  “Molly Porter was thirty-two. So it could be her.”

  Caleb took his phone back, turned it off, and placed it on the table. “We can never prove it though.”

  “No, I guess not,” Jocelyn said. “But it would explain why Molly Porter has no past.”

  “Do you think her husband knows?” Caleb asked.

  Jocelyn pushed her sleep-tousled hair behind her ears. She thought of what she’d found online—the Porter family at galas and charity benefits, dressed in fine clothes, standing on red carpets to have their photos taken. “I don’t know,” Jocelyn answered honestly. “I don’t know that the Porter family would have been accepting of a past like this if they knew.”

  “Maybe just the husband knows,” Caleb said. “It’s possible.”

  “That could be why they’re so private,” Jocelyn considered. Her own thoughts had run more toward a domestic abuse situation. Evan Porter had been so firm in his conviction that his wife would have no need to leave their house, and Molly Porter had gone so far as to pay the young babysitter not to tell him she’d been going out. Why the need to keep the simple fact of leaving the house from her husband? “Something’s not right,” Jocelyn concluded.

  With a sigh, Caleb turned his phone to the sleep mode and stood, looking down at her with a half-smile. “I’m guessing you’re hell-bent on finding out what that is.”

  Jocelyn smiled back up at him. She loved him for not telling her to let it go. “Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I am.”

  ~~~

  They were down a vehicle. Caleb helped Jocelyn get Olivia off to school and then dropped her at a nearby car rental place so she could get some wheels. Her first stop was Anita’s house to check on her partner and fill her in on all she’d found out. Anita said she’d tried to find out what she could about Molly Porter online until her head started to pound. Jocelyn told her not to worry about it—to get some rest—and headed off to the Porters’ home. She called Kevin on her way over.

  “Did the Marine Unit find anything?” she asked as soon as he picked up.

  “Good morning, Rush. Nice to hear from you. How are you today?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Kev.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Rush,” he said. “You’re not on the job anymore, and this is not one of your cases.”

  Luck was with her as she pulled onto the Porters’ street. A parking spot yawned open a few houses up the hill from the Porters’. Jocelyn maneuvered into it while Kevin went on about how she should let the Molly Porter thing go.

  “I’m going home, Kev,” she lied. “My back is killing me.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

  They hung up after he again promised to let her know if Molly Porter’s body was recovered. Jocelyn cracked the window of the rental car and turned it off. She wasn’t sure what she was even doing here. The truth was that she had no intention of approaching Evan Porter. Kevin was right. This wasn’t a case.

  Along the pavement side of the street, several news vans were parked—NBC 10, 6ABC, and FOX 29. No reporters waving microphones were in sight, but a few more casually dressed people loitered in the street, smoking cigarettes and scrolling on their phones. Jocelyn pegged them for producers or cameramen. They’d probably be there most of the day and possibly the next day, but the news moved fast in Philadelphia. Within a few days, the Molly Porter story would be completely forgotten. Even if her body was found, there was no guarantee the press would return to cover it. Not if something juicier was happening in the city.

  With a sigh, Jocelyn settled back into her seat and watched the front of the Porter home. A woman in jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt walked past. Jocelyn saw a tattoo sleeve extending from the cuff of her right shirtsleeve to the back of her hand—all elaborate black designs. Her hair was long and dark with bright red streaks slashing through it. The red of a cherry, not the soft auburn or light tangerine of natural hair color. The woman slowed at the Porter home, staring just a moment at the front door before walking on.

  Jocelyn stayed for an hour but realized she wasn’t going to see much—not with the news vans lining the street. The next day, she returned to nearly the same scene. This time, only the 6ABC van remained. Again, she sat in her rental car for an hour. She was about to leave when she saw the tattoo-sleeved woman with the cherry red streaks in her hair walking up the street, this time toward Jocelyn. Her face was heavily made up—foundation caked over her pale skin, her eyeliner and mascara so dark and pronounced she’d almost qualify as goth. As she drew closer, Jocelyn got a better look at her face. A nose ring glinted from her left nostril. Jocelyn estimated her to be in her mid-to-late thirties. Again, she slowed as she passed the Porter home, eyes lingering on the front door, but then kept walking. Jocelyn used her rearview mirror to watch the woman walk to the top of the street. The corner house had a “For Sale” sign in its front window. It was on the two front steps of that house that Tattoo Sleeve sat and produced a pack of cigarettes from somewhere inside her bra. She lit up and exhaled, her eyes fixed on the Porter home.

  For a moment, Jocelyn wondered if she was just a curious bystander or neighbor. Someone who knew of the Porters and was now interested since she’d seen Evan Porter on the local news. Using her rearview mirror, she kept an eye on the woman until, after finishing her cigarette, she stood, flicked the butt to the pavement, and walked around the corner.

  Jocelyn started her vehicle, pulled out of the parking spot, and sped down the street. She turned right at the bottom and then made her way up the neighboring street, searching for the tattoo-sleeved woman. She weaved through several nearby streets, but the woman was gone. With a sigh, she drove home.

  On day three, Molly Porter’s body still hadn’t been pulled from the river, but the media people were gone from Evan Porter’s street. Jocelyn sat outside once more after dropping Olivia off at school. There was no activity. She waited only twenty minutes this time, thinking how stupid this was—what did she hope to find out or to gain from stalking the Porter home? The neat stucco exterior told her nothing about why Molly had chosen to jump off a bridge.

  Her fingers brushed the car keys, about to turn the ignition, when the front door opened and young Tessa stepped out. She got to the second step before turning back to the partially opened door. There stood Evan Porter, bare-chested in a pair of boxer shorts with a satisfied grin on his face. Tessa waved and flashed him a momentary smile—a kind of delirious, euphoric smile but marred with something else. Something beneath it. Uncertainty.

  Guilt.

  “Oh shit,” Jocelyn muttered to herself. She took a closer look at the babysitter. Her round face was flushed. The back of her hair was mussed, and her shirt looked crooked on her body. Once the Porter door closed behind her, she hurried over to her own home and disappeared inside.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jocelyn mumbled. That hadn’t taken Even Porter long—or the babysitter. She wondered if the two had been carrying on together before Molly killed herself, although Jocelyn wasn’t sure how they would have managed if Molly was home as much as Evan had alluded to. Would Molly have trusted Tessa to keep her mysterious Tuesday outings a secret if she knew her babysitter was screwing her husband?

  Thoughts tumbled through Jocelyn’s brain as she stared through the windshield. A flash of red in her sideview mirror caught her eye. A few houses up, sandwiched between two parked cars, stood Tattoo Sleeve, her cell phone aimed at the front of the Porter household. She’d recorded the w
hole thing, Jocelyn realized.

  She was out of the car in seconds, hurrying up the hill toward the woman. Tattoo Sleeve caught sight of her and turned, fleeing. Jocelyn’s back screamed, tightening up, and slowing her down. “Wait,” she called. “Dammit.”

  Her breath came out in huffs by the time she reached the crest of the hill, the woman now out of her sight. Pain made sweat bead along her forehead. As she rounded the corner, turning left as Tattoo Sleeve had, she saw the woman again, not running away as expected but struggling to get the key into the lock of an extremely old-model Chevy. As Jocelyn neared, she looked up and scowled. “I don’t know what you think you saw back there, but it’s none of your business.”

  Jocelyn held one hand against her low back, trying to breathe through the pain. “It’s not what you think,” Jocelyn told her. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

  The woman froze, her hand hovering over the driver side door handle. She looked Jocelyn up and down, taking in her jeans and old Phillies T-shirt beneath a leather jacket. “You a cop?”

  Jocelyn shook her head.

  Some of the panic in the woman’s taut posture leaked away—whether she believed Jocelyn wasn’t a cop or she just realized that Jocelyn was in no shape to do anything to her, Jocelyn wasn’t sure. “Then who are you?”

  Jocelyn stepped forward, leaning a palm against the dull brown hood of the woman’s car for support. “I’m the person Molly Porter rear-ended before she jumped into the Schuylkill River.”

  “Oh shit.”

  ~~~

  Bob’s Diner had been a fixture in Jocelyn’s neighborhood since the late 1940s. It sat along Ridge Avenue between a church and a cemetery, sleek in silver chrome with red stripes on its exterior. The inside was a throwback to the 1950s, and fittingly, it was one of the only businesses around that still took cash only. Jocelyn and Lacey—that was Tattoo Sleeve’s actual name—slid into a booth and ordered coffee while they looked over their menus.