A Penny Found

A Penny Found

By Barbara Leachman

Book One of the Detective Joe Denali Series

Copyright 2011 by Barbara Leachman

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design by David Jenkins

This novel is a work of fiction, totally and completely pulled out of the creative consciousness of the author. After having read mysteries, watched television shows and talked to people in law enforcement, the author created a story. The characters are not real but only imagined. Most of the places in the city of Albuquerque are real places. Some of the street names have been changed. Houses located within the city were created out of whole cloth, except one. The people who live in that house will recognize it and have given permission for it to be used.

The author’s intent was to write a fictional story that readers will enjoy.

This book is dedicated to my brother,

Jimmie Hale,

who loved listening to my made-up stories

while he dried the dishes for me,

And to his late wife, Estella,

who read my manuscripts and

cried in all the right places.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people go into the writing of a novel. The author has the ideas and compiles the words, but the list of talented people who give ideas, listen, read and critique those words are many.

Among those are Albuquerque Detective Jay Barnes who read sections of the book and showed me how to write dialog in cop-talk; Craig Johnson who told me at a Tony Hillerman writing conference to ask myself what the story is about. His words and the opportunity to tour the office of the medical examiner and see a film of an autopsy broke the author’s writer’s block.

Thanks to my two critique groups who patiently read and re-read the material until I got it right: Stephen Gregg, Dave McCarthy, Jack Phelan, Rosslyn Elliott and Lorena Hughes.

Many thanks to these people who answered questions and allowed me to pick their brains: Gwen Shogren, John Francis-Public Relations officer with Rio Rancho PD, NM, Ray Myers, Scott Conner, Officer Briane L. Dennison, APD SRO/Chaplain, Jo Ann Odom, Doug and Rachael Hush, Tom Shoemaker, Jim Hale, Jim and Donna Odom, Brian Critchfield, Officer Danny Hughes of the APD, John Francis of APD and along with Detective Barnes, his partner, Don Roberts of the Child Exploitation detail.

A special thanks to my husband, Reid Leachman, who believes in me.

—BL

CHAPTER ONE

Wednesday evening, NW Albuquerque

Purple bruises ringed Penny Murphy’s wrists. She touched her left breast and winced. Thankfully the beating had been short though harsh. When it was over, he stood over her where she still lay on the cement floor, her knees pulled up to her chest.

No more. Please no more.

He lifted her into his arms and held her as he would an infant, pulled her close to his lips and hissed in her ear. You know what will happen to you if you come upstairs while I’m gone.

When he dropped her on the mattress, she pressed her lips together to keep from crying out. His heavy footsteps ascended the stairs. The door slammed behind him.

He hadn’t locked the door in a long time. Penny knew it was just another way of daring her to disobey so he’d have reason to hurt her. Some days he told her to go up into the house and do some cleaning or laundry. Others were like today when he forbade her to leave the basement. She shifted her body, aching to move away from the springs that poked her through the thin mattress. Gripped by the knife-like stab to her ribs, she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out, then she lay still, listening.

Just a little longer.

Sounds from above. Whistling. Water draining through pipes. Toilet flushing. His steps came near the basement door and he paused. Penny held her breath. He moved on.

The door from the kitchen into the garage slammed.

She pressed her hands over her eyes to clear her thoughts and prayed. Go. Go. Please make him go.

Another door slammed, this one muted.

The grind of the car’s ignition. A soft, nearly imperceptible purr.

The dissonant whir of the garage door rising, and then lowering.

Quiet.

Gingerly touching the cut on her lip, she sat up. Blood from her fingertips came off onto the sheet, but it didn’t matter. Even the pain didn’t matter this time.

She pulled her aching body off the bed all the while listening for sounds that would tell her he had returned.

She crept up the basement steps, one stealth movement after another. On the top step she paused, took in a shaky breath, and pushed open the unlocked door.

A living room lamp cast a ghostly glimmer into the deserted kitchen. She drew back, startled by her own silhouette stretching along the wall. Slowly releasing her breath, she tiptoed over the tile and into the hall licking her cut lip as she went. The metallic taste of blood turned her stomach and she stopped and took short breaths to keep from gagging.

Not time to be sick.

She blotted her lip with the tail of her shirt and at the end of the hallway, pulled open the linen closet door, reached under a pile of bed sheets and freed one from the bottom of the stack.

Penny hurried back down the hall and into the basement where she began to tear the sheet into strips.

When the time came she would be ready.

Early Thursday morning, NE Albuquerque

Startled awake, Joe Denali stared into the darkness. Heart thudded as he pushed the blanket off his sweaty body. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands in an attempt to erase the haunting images.

Someone’s going to die.

Joe’s black Labrador brought him back into the present. Sooner, his paws on the side of the bed licked his master’s cheek. Joe looked at the digital clock—1:08. He’d been asleep a little over an hour.

Sooner never woke him during the night. With threads of the dream still fresh in his mind he wondered if he had awakened the animal with his cries. He scratched the dog’s neck then gently pushed him away. Go back to sleep, buddy. Everything’s all right.

Sooner sighed and returned to his SuperSoft mat beside the bed.

But was it really all right? Joe turned on his side and stared at the darkened window. This dream had come to him only a few times in his life, but every time it had proven to be a portent of danger, or worse—death.

Too late to call Beth and check on Rosie, or Mom and Dad in Amarillo. Yet he wanted to, thought about doing it regardless of the time.

Probably nothing to do with my family. Probably another homicide in Albuquerque.

Joe let his mind go over the dream again. He never could hear what the eagle said or why it made him cry in the dream. That was the part that bothered him. He turned over and sighed.

Sooner came to him and rested his head on the bed beside him. Joe patted the Lab’s sleek forehead. The touch of a living, breathing being comforted him.

Saturday morning, NW Albuquerque

Thumps, a dull thud then a guttural moan woke Penny from a deep sleep.

Her first perception was of the open door at the head of the stairs. Her next, the recognition of the labored intake of breath coming from the foot of her bed.

She waited for him, staring away from the dim upstairs light and into the shadows. A dark thatch of thick hair rose up near her feet. The foot of the mattress lowered as hands were pressed on it and Gabe’s face appeared. He rose to his feet and Penny noticed again how his narrow shoulders suggested a much smaller man than did the heaviness of his hips and thighs. He grimaced and fell across her, momentarily pushed her breath from her lungs. She expected the searing pain from his penetration into her body to be followed by burning and stinging, leaving her sore and bruised and sometimes bleeding. Unable to get an erection, he cursed. She turned her face away from the acrid odor of his liquor-filled breath. His failure would be her fault, of course, and she braced herself for the beating. Instead of rising from the mattress, Gabe rolled onto his back, and raised his hands to touch his head. He uttered a deep snort and the gurgling of saliva caught in his throat. His hands dropped to the mattress and lay still.

Penny eased away from him and waited for the harsh snore that came and went with each exhalation of his breath. When Gabe didn’t move again, she rolled off the bed, the cement cold on her bare feet. What would he do if he caught her crouching on the floor watching him?

A hint of morning light filtered through the lone window. Muscles tensed, Penny stood up. Gabe’s bottom lip drooped at an angle. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth. One eyelid opened enough to expose the white of an eyeball.

Surprised that the time had come so quickly after she’d made her escape plan, she hesitated. Could she really do this? Several seconds passed before Penny realized it was now or maybe never. She reached under the mattress and pulled out the first of many strips of the sheet she’d tied to the frame. Moving slowly, she brought the free end toward Gabe’s outstretched arm. She slipped the material around his wrist. When he didn’t resist, she wound it around twice more and tied it in a hard knot.

She tiptoed to the other side of the bed and tied his other arm. Satisfied he wasn’t going to awaken, she hurried from his feet back to his arms until all the strips bound Gabe Russo where he lay.

Saturday morning, NE Albuquerque

Joe opened his eyes to Sooner’s rump a foot from his face. Still groggy he pushed at the dog’s backside.

I hate dog hair in my bed, he mumbled and pushed the tangled bedcovers away from his legs, got up and gave the dog another shove.

Sooner lifted his head and looked over his shoulder.

Joe clapped his hands together and hollered louder than planned. Git!

With a deep dog-sigh, Sooner jumped to the floor. Joe stripped off the linens, and at the same time slipped his bare feet into a pair of loafers. Another thing Joe didn’t like—his bare feet on the floor. Wadding the soiled sheets in his arms he headed down the steps taking them two at a time with Sooner lumbering after him. As the two of them passed through the small kitchen, the fresh-brewed coffee aroma from the automatic coffee maker almost derailed him from his mission. In the laundry room he stuffed the linens into his washer and pushed the ample doggie door open with his foot. Sooner didn’t move, his brown eyes on his master. Knowing Sooner’s dislike for the door he had especially built so the animal could come and go at will, Joe gave in and opened the back door. Dumb mutt. Do your thing because as soon as you’ve finished, it’s bath time. No breakfast until we’re done.

Sooner ran into the yard and sniffed at the fence. Then he made his way across the grass until he found the right spot to relieve himself. As Joe watched his routine, he wondered again why he, a certified perfectionist, had brought an animal into his home. Was it because of loneliness or out of spite to his ex-wife? Or was it really for his four-year-old daughter, Rosie, as he claimed? Then he remembered touching Sooner’s soft black coat and how it calmed him after his dream. Maybe I got this dog for me.

He left Sooner to find his way back into the house and poured himself a mug of black coffee. He took one sip then carefully lifted the paper liner filled with grounds and dumped them into the garbage can under the sink. He used a paper towel to wipe the moisture from inside the top of the coffee maker, checked the granite countertop for spills, folded the towel into fourths and tossed it into the container along with the grounds. Satisfied, he picked up his cup, took another drink and looked out the front window.

Joe followed the example of his police chief father to check out the neighborhood, a habit that had ingrained itself in the son. This morning everything appeared to be the way he’d seen it when he came home from work last night. No strange cars. Nothing out of place. With trained detective eyes, he scanned the blank-faced condos, their driveways empty in accordance with the gated community’s covenant requiring all vehicles banished out of sight in garages. Up and down the street—nothing out of place. Well-kept xeriscaped yards, flat-roofed stucco condominiums, a few desert plants and fewer trees.

The area wasn’t a place to raise a four-year old who loved running barefoot in the grass. But, just for Rosie, as soon as he moved into his condo, he had the back yard sodded with Bermuda grass. The tragedy of the situation was not that Joe had to watch her playing in the grass, or that a big Labrador retriever was soiling the lawn, but that his daughter lived with his ex-wife and only visited him every other weekend.

Joe leaned against the counter, his mind going over the previous week. He thought about the leads he’d chased down and how they’d led him to a man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend.

Just another job well done for law enforcement, but one that gave Joe pleasure in taking a bad guy off the street. No homicides had come across his desk.

Assured he hadn’t missed anything on the job, he allowed himself to remember the recurring dream he’d had during the week. When he revisited it in the light of day, it was never as frightening as when it came to him in the dead of night. He replayed it in his mind.

He ran amidst mountains of blue ice until snow clasped his legs in its wet embrace. Caught. Stuck. Imprisoned.Terrified.

The lonely hoot of an owl and a coyote’s plaintiff cry echoed over the lonely landscape. The swish of feathered wings broke through the frigid air as sharp talons dug into his shoulders and lifted him high above the frozen terrain. Sharp white light cut across his vision and momentarily blinded him.

His eyesight returned. He raised his head and looked into the fierce expression of the bird which held him. Its golden beak opened, and a word flew away in the wind. Lowering its head, the eagle gazed into his eyes and Joe wept at the message.

Cold sweat popped from Joe’s brow. He wiped it away and downed the last of his coffee. The sting of hot coffee on his tongue brought him back to reality. That same night, just before falling asleep, he had finished reading a mystery novel about the Southwest.

Could a story steeped in Navajo lore and symbols have brought on the dream? He shook his head at the thought. He’d had this dream long before he ever heard of Tony Hillerman. Joe poured another mug of coffee and pushed away the images. The feeling he’d had when he awoke from the dream hadn’t left him. No murders last week in Albuquerque didn’t change what he knew.

Someone is in trouble.

CHAPTER TWO

With Gabe safely tied to the bed, Penny grabbed her clothes from the cardboard box that had held them for many years, took one of the large garbage bags from beside the laundry sink and climbed the stairs. She closed the basement door and inched her way down the hallway until she stood in front of the room that had once been hers. The warning Gabe had given her the first time he left her upstairs echoed in her ears. Don’t go into your old room. I’ll find out, and you’ll wish you hadn’t been born.

Wish you hadn’t been born. His words had cut through her soul. Did he know that someone had died because she was born? How many days in her life had she wished she had been the one to die instead?

Penny gripped the door knob and turned it. The quiet hiss of metal against metal broke the stillness. A soft tick, the squeak of hinges long unused, the rustle of wood sliding over carpet. Something fluttered across her vision, and she jumped back from the doorway. A scrap of yellow paper fell at her feet.

Was that how he would have known? She reached toward the top of the door. Too high. If she had disobeyed before this day and opened the door, she was too short to replace the paper. What he would have done to her was no worse than all he’d already done as long as she’d been in his house. Her fear of Gabe Russo had long ago turned into hate—pure, absolute hatred for him and his rules. Obedience had become her only chance for survival.

Penny boldly stepped over the paper scrap and entered her room. The jeans she wore today were the ones she’d taken off the last time she’d been in this room, the ones he had thrown down the steps to her after locking her, naked and cold, in the basement for three days. She had no idea how long ago that had been.

Moving quickly, she jerked open the drawers of the chest and emptied the contents into the garbage bag she’d brought from the basement. She yanked the clothes in the closet from the hangers. On the floor were her good black patent leather shoes and her Keds, the ones she’d come here with when she was fifteen years old. She stuck her foot into the dress shoes. They were too small. Frustration coiled in her belly. She had dreamed of wearing those shoes again and couldn’t leave them behind. Both pairs went into her bag. Turning from the closet she saw the heels of her old rubber flip-flops beside the bed. She pushed her feet into them, her toes hanging over the end, but they kept her bare skin off the floor, and that’s all that mattered.

Movement in the oval mirror over the dresser caught her eye. For a minute she thought she wasn’t alone, then she recognized the girl. Hair once the color of shiny copper was now a dull and greasy rust tangled around her small pale face. Penny moved nearer, her brown eyes wide with the wonder of her own image.

It’s me.

She touched her fingers to her face. Her nails dirty and broken.

What have you done with me, Gabe Russo?

She couldn’t stand to look at her reflection any longer and backed out of the room.

Penny dragged the bag to Gabe’s bedroom. Sickened by his odor—sweet from aftershave and sour from his body sweat, she didn’t want to go in, but knew she must. In this room was her salvation.

She knew where everything was in Gabe’s room. A few weeks after he locked her into the basement, instead of tossing her a little bit of food, he came down the steps carrying a basket of his dirty clothes.

You wash these, fold them, and put them back in the basket. I’ll be back to get them tonight. He handed her the paper sack he held under his arm.

She didn’t look in the sack until he had locked the door. Inside was an apple, a banana, an orange and a loaf of bread. Before she ate the food, fear had her start his laundry while sure that this was a horrible trick he was playing on her. But he did not return and she ate all of the fruit and half of the bread before she realized she might not get any more for a long time.

By the time Gabe came home his basket of clean clothes was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. That evening he said nothing to her, carried the basket away and left the door ajar. Did it mean he was going to let her out? In a few minutes he came back, stood at the top of the stairs then came down to her. That was the beginning.

Days turned into nights. Seasons changed from cool to freezing in her basement home. Gabe came and went upstairs and this she only knew by sounds. When she heard the click of the lock on her door, he might be bringing food or laundry, and those times she didn’t mind. But when she heard his steps on the stairs, she braced herself. Those sounds meant pain.

A few months ago Gabe opened the door and motioned for her to come upstairs. From now on, he said, "this door won’t be locked. While I’m at work, you will