Читать книгу The Detective's Dilemma - Karen McCullough - Страница 5

The policeman who’d shown up at the doorway when the detectives went out stayed with her. Sarah shivered as the two men left.

Neither had come right out and said it, but they didn’t believe her story. Their raised eyebrows and the awkward pauses between questions made their doubts all too clear.

Detective Hennesy was an older stocky man with a homely face moderated by a kind, sympathetic look in his eyes. He might give her the benefit of the doubt. The other man, Detective Christianson, was younger, taller, leaner, and would have been good looking except his expression was cold, almost harsh. No sympathy there.

“Are you all right, miss?” the young police officer asked. “Can I do anything for you?”

Can you make this all be a dream? She shook her head. “No thanks.” Vince, what the hell happened? Who were those men and why did they do it?

Cold settled into her bones. Were they going to arrest her? What would she do then? She couldn’t make her brain deal with it.

“Could I get a cup of coffee?” she asked.

The cop pulled out a box and spoke into it, asking if someone could get her the requested coffee. “We’ll try to get some for you,” he said.

Before it arrived, though, the pair of detectives returned.

“We’ve got to check every shoe in the place,” Christianson said.

Hennesy ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Marcia’s on it. Her guys are gathering them up.”

“Good.” Christianson turned to her. “We’d like you to come down to the office with us. We’re not arresting you, but we have questions we need to ask. First, we’d like you to change clothes and give us what you’re wearing.”

A woman came into the room behind him.

“Why?” Sarah stood, hoping she could stay upright as dizziness threatened.

“Evidence,” Christianson said.

The cold harsh tone made her shiver again. She looked up at him, meeting eyes whose color teetered between blue and gray but had ice in them either way. Still, for a moment she sensed something more behind those cool eyes, a fire he deliberately kept banked perhaps, a warmth he had to restrain.

She wanted heat. She felt stiff and shivery, like her bones were turning to ice.

“Ready?” the female police officer asked.

Sarah followed her out of the room. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. The detectives were watching her.

Sarah led the way to her own bedroom and crossed to the closet to get a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a fleece jacket. She got clean underwear out of a drawer and headed for the bathroom.

“Leave the door open,” the other woman said. “And hand me the robe and gown when you take them off. They’re evidence.” She slipped on a pair of latex gloves.

Sarah stopped in the doorway. “Can I take a shower? I’ve got blood all over me.”

“Not yet. I need to get some pictures of you dressed and undressed. Just to record the blood on you. And we may need more later.”

Fortunately the woman was quick and took no more than a few seconds snapping the pictures. When Sarah had changed and handed the things to her, the woman put them in a bag, sealed it with tape, and labeled it.

“Ready to go?”

Sarah shrugged into the fleece jacket and pulled her purse out of a drawer. Was she ready? Not really. She wasn’t ready for any of this. She felt like a robot or an animated ice sculpture. Her body moved, did the right things, but somehow her brain hadn’t caught up. Emotions were on hold. She lingered in that moment between knowing an injury had happened and feeling the pain from it.

That numbness saw her through the trip to the police station with the two detectives, being escorted to a small room with nothing but a table, five chairs, and a mirror on one wall--probably a window from the other side--and filling out an informational form. She gave them phone numbers for Dan and Marc, Vince’s sons. She didn’t know his ex-wife’s number.

“I want you to understand that you’re not under arrest right now and you’re free to go if you wish,” Christianson said.

Right now? “You think I killed him.”

Christianson’s eyes narrowed.

Hennesy’s tone and expression were gentler. “Miss Martin, you admitted you pulled the trigger on the gun. We have to start with that.

More ice congealed inside her. Even the blood in her veins was getting sluggish. Her brain wouldn’t work. Dark stars gathered at the corners of her eyes and nausea roiled her stomach. A hand pushed her head down to her knees. After a moment in that awkward position the darkness retreated. She drew a deep breath before she straightened up.

“You want a drink or something?” Hennesy asked.

“Coffee, if I can get some.”

Christianson left the room and returned a few minutes later with three cups of coffee, a few packets of sugar, and artificial creamer. It had to be the worst coffee she’d ever tasted, even with two sugars, but it was hot. She wrapped her hands around the cup and let the warmth penetrate her. Sipping it helped thaw some of the ice inside.

The first questions were easy--her name, address, birth date, and other facts about her life. Christianson tossed them at her, one after the other, while Hennesy scribbled notes on a legal pad. She answered with no problem, telling them she’d been born right there in Charlotte, North Carolina, the date, and her parents’ names. It went smoothly until they got to her place of employment.

“I don’t have a regular job.” She watched Christianson’s eyes for his reaction but they remained neutral. “I go to school. The community college.”

“What are you studying?”

“Just got my GED four months ago, in June. I’m working on a transfer associate degree right now.”

“You’re twenty-five and still going to school?”

“My mom got sick and there was only me to take care of her, so I had to drop out of high school.”

“What about your father?”

“Died in an automobile accident when I was eight.”

“No other family?”

“My mom was an only child and her parents died a while back. I don’t know about my dad’s family. My mom never talked about them and we never heard from them, even when he was killed. It was always just the three of us.”

“Three?” Christianson asked.

“My mom, me, and my younger sister, Barbara.”

“Where is Barbara now?”

Sarah set the coffee cup aside and studied the fingers of both hands as she wove them together. “She’s gone, too. About a month after my mom died, we found out Barbara had leukemia.”

“Lot of bad luck in your life,” Christianson said.

She looked up, confused by his tone. Sympathy or suspicion? His expression didn’t help her decide. The frost still chilled his light blue eyes.

She shrugged, fighting the searing pain cutting into her chest. “And now Vince. It’s not a good idea to get close to me.” She sat up straighter. “Damn. Self-pity alert. I really try not to go there.”

Hennesy said, “You’ve got some reason for self-pity, but you’re right. It’s better not to indulge it.” Oddly, he threw a hard glance at his partner.

Did Christianson have something to pity himself for, too?

“That’s what the therapist said.” she agreed.

The younger detective narrowed his eyes at his partner, but his expression smoothed out again when he turned back to her. “To the matter at hand. How did you meet Vince Capelli?”

No mistaking the coolness of the tone when he asked the question or the slight edge of…disapproval? He had an interesting face. It would be appealing if he weren’t so cold and judgmental. She shook her head and dragged her attention back to the question.

“About six years ago I started doing some modeling on the side…to make a little extra money. I’m not tall enough to really do it professionally, but a couple of local agencies sometimes needed help. I could do it in the evenings when my mom and Barbara were asleep. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I was doing a charity fashion show, and Vince was there. We got to talking, and he was, well, nice. Pleasant and easy to talk to, and understanding when I told him about my family problems. He said that sometimes he needed an escort to go with him to some social things he had to attend for business. He was divorced, and it would give him some status to be seen with a…a pretty young woman. He’d pay me for it. He had lots of money, but he was kind of lonely. He didn’t actually say that, but I figured it out.”

She couldn’t bear to see their reactions, especially not Christianson’s. She picked up the coffee cup again and swirled the liquid, staring down into the small vortex. “People won’t believe it, but I…I liked him. I wasn’t in love with him or anything, but he was nice to me, and he really was lonely. We went out together for a while. Then my mother died and Barbara got sick, and eventually I’d used up all the money we had for my mom’s medical stuff. Some of the doctors and clinics wouldn’t even see Barbara because I still owed them money for my mom. What could I do?” She looked up at them. “What would you do? I couldn’t let my sister suffer if there was anything I could do.”

“So you asked Capelli for help?” Hennesy said.

A lump formed in her throat. “I didn’t ask. He offered. If I became his…lover, he’d pay all the medical expenses and give me an allowance. It meant Barbara could get the best medical treatments. When those failed, I could at least keep her in comfort to the end. Vince was wonderful.” The obstruction thickened, and she looked at her coffee again. “He did more than just pay the bills. He helped me. He was a friend when I had no one else. It was a terrible time after she died. I’d lost everyone. I don’t know how I would’ve survived it without him.”

She sniffed and fought against the incipient tears before she dared look at them again.

Hennesy’s expression was kind. Christianson’s showed only a cool slice of suspicion. Fear lanced through the pain of her memories. Detective Christianson doubted everything. He probably thought she’d made up the three men and that she’d actually killed Vince. She might be arrested, go to trial, and go to prison. Or worse. Murder could get the death penalty. What could she do? How to convince them? She missed Vince with almost unbearable intensity already. She could’ve talked to him about it.

The truth. Just keep telling them the truth. It was all she had. That and herself. It had been enough, just barely. She brushed away the tears and straightened. “I’m sorry. Drifting into self-pity again.”

“Self pity? Or just grief?” Hennesy asked gently.

His kindness almost broke her control. Her eyes burned, but she forced a smile. “Probably both.”

Silence ensued for a moment before Christianson broke it. “Tell us again what happened tonight.”

She went through it again. The images remained so vivid, they might have been branded on her mind. She remembered going into the room, Vince standing on the far side, flanked by the two men, the other one coming to her and shoving the gun at her. The kick after each shot. If the man in the mask hadn’t held her steady, it might have knocked her over. The noise… Her ears still rang with echoes from the gunshots. The blood, all the blood, everywhere. With an effort, she pulled herself back together and finished the story.

When she stopped talking, both men stared at her. Doubt rolled off the pair so strongly she could almost see it. Then their questions came fast.

“The sound that first woke you. Can you describe it?” Christianson picked up his coffee cup and grimaced when he took a sip.

“A thump or a crash.”

“Like a body hitting the floor?”

“Maybe. Or a chair tipping over. Or…now that I think about it, a desk drawer being dropped on the floor. But I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t tell.”

“But you’re sure of the time.”

“I looked at the clock when I woke up.”

They went through every single detail of her story, questioning, asking her to repeat things or explain or digging for more information.

Hennesy consulted his notes. “The two men with Vince when you entered the room. Did you recognize them?”

“They had masks on. No.”

“Full masks? Were you able to see any parts of their faces? Their hair?”

“No. They were more like hoods. You know those things you pull down over your whole head.”

“Ski masks?” Hennesy asked.

“I guess.” She described the builds of the two men, the color of their eyes, shape of hands, the black sweatshirts and pants they wore with the hoods. Every detail of the room, the intruders, even what Vince said and did were taken apart, examined, and mined for anything that might shed some light on what had happened.

Vince’s last words to her, that she had the key, particularly interested the detectives, though she had no idea what he’d been talking about or what it meant. They made her go through everything she could associate with “keys,” try to remember anything Vince might have said before about them, even speculate about what he might have been hinting at, but none of it helped her understand. She couldn’t begin to guess what kind of key it was, or even if he meant a real key or a metaphorical one, and she had even less idea what it might unlock.

“Can we look through your purse?” Christianson asked.

Sarah handed it to him. “Go ahead.”

He upended it, but let things slide out gently, one at a time, onto the table. He set aside her cell phone, poked into the makeup bag, ignored the pack of tissues, sunglasses, and notebook, and glanced through the wallet. Then he picked up her key chain, holding it by the flat pen fob.

“Tell me what each of these keys does.”

She identified the key to her car. The rest went to various doors around the house.

“No safe key or safe deposit box?”

“Nothing like that. I’m sorry. I really don’t know what key he meant.”

They went back to going through the events of the night. They spent what seemed like hours dissecting every sentence, almost every word of what she told them.

Then they switched gears and asked her about what she planned to do now.

“I haven’t even thought about it. I want to go back to school. I need the degree to build a life. But…”

“But?”

“I’ll probably have to get a job. I have some savings, but I don’t know how far it will stretch.”

“Savings? Won’t you inherit something from Vince?”

Her tired, sluggish brain took a few moments to grasp the implications. “You think I killed him for an inheritance?” She started to laugh but felt it getting out of control and snapped her mouth shut. “His estate goes to his wife and sons. If he left me anything at all, it wouldn’t be more than a small bequest. Vince liked me well enough, but I wasn’t family. A mistress, maybe a friend, but not family.”

“You didn’t expect anything from him?” Christianson’s eyebrows rose.

“He’s already done a lot for me. He paid all the medical bills, and they were huge. He gave me a generous allowance, generous enough to let me build up some savings. I knew pretty much what was in his will. He told me. Everything goes to his sons except for a good-sized bequest to his ex. That seemed fair to me.”

Christianson didn’t say anything for a few moments.

So much for your theories that I killed him for the money.

Hennesy flipped a couple of pages of his pad. “Tell us about what he did earlier today. Anything unusual?”

She shook her head. “It all seemed very normal. I got back from class at four. He was in the office, working. I leaned in and waved like I always do. We had dinner at six. He went back to his office to make a few phone calls then went to the den to watch TV. I was studying in my room until about nine and then joined him. At eleven I went to bed, but he wasn’t tired. That’s it.”

“He didn’t seem worried or frightened?”

“No.”

“Concerned about anything?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t mention anything.”

“Did he get any threats?”

“Not that I knew of.”

“What did you argue about?” Christianson threw the question at her when his partner paused to write a note.

“Argue?” She hesitated, not sure what to say. “We didn’t argue.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Christianson stared at her with those cold blue-gray eyes. “You never argued with him?”

“We had disagreements, yes. Nothing serious.”

“What did you disagree about?”

“Politics, mostly. We have different views on some things.”

“Money?”

“No. Or only once, when he wanted to buy me a car and tried to get me a Cadillac. I wanted something smaller and less…opulent.” A headache gathered behind her eyes, running into her temples.

“What about your boyfriends? Did Vince approve?”

“What boyfriends?”

Christianson’s eyes narrowed. “Come on, don’t tell me a girl as pretty as you doesn’t have a few male friends on the side. Or maybe just one special one?”

“No.”

“Why not?” The questions came fast and hard, like hammer blows, making her head throb even more painfully.

“I… There was Vince.”

“He owned you?”

“No, but I owed him some loyalty.”

“You never spoke to any of the guys in your classes?”

“Well, I did occasionally.”

“Flirted with them?”

“No.”

“None of them ever asked you out?”

“Some of them tried, but I never accepted. And then word got around and they stopped asking.”

“What word?”

He leaned toward her, his face only inches from hers. She couldn’t escape being aware of him…large, threatening, and damn it, handsome.

Her breath caught. Pain, grief, and exhaustion wore at her control. “Because everyone at school knew. Knew that I lived with Vince. That I was his…”

“His whore?”

“Jay!” Hennesy shot out of his chair, glaring at his partner.

At the same time Sarah shouted, “His lover!” Tears threatened again and she swallowed hard and blinked, struggling to hold them back.

Christianson backed up a step but kept his gaze on her. “And that kept all the guys from making passes?”

“The rumor got around that Vince had underworld connections.”

“Was it true?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

Christianson took a longer pull from his coffee cup but his gaze never left her face. “You don’t know?”

“Vince never said much to me about his businesses. He said the less I knew the better.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

She clenched her fists and fought for control, over anger this time instead of pain.

Hennesy glared at his partner again. “Jay.”

Christianson drained the last of the coffee and crumpled the cup in his fist. Hennesy went back to making notes. “You know any of his business connections?” Christianson asked.

“A few.” She rattled off the names of people she’d met at some of the parties or gatherings she’d attended with Vince.

“What about friends?”

“I don’t know that he had a lot of close friends. The people I just mentioned are probably closest. And me.”

“You?”

“We were friends.”

“Let’s go over it again,” Christianson said.”You went to bed at eleven. Did you go right to sleep?”

They wanted her to tell the whole story yet again? She glanced at her watch. Five-ten. She wouldn’t be getting to class today, most likely. Especially not if they arrested her. She sighed and began talking.

This time Christianson didn’t stop her as often but when he did, he was a lot more aggressive and hostile.

“You really expect us to believe someone actually forced a gun into your hand and made you shoot?”

“It happened.”

“Stand up,” he said.

Sarah complied.

The detective came around the table to stand beside her. “Which side did he approach from?”

“My left.”

He walked to her left and stopped at her side. “I’m pushing a gun into your hand. Show me how he did it.”

“He stood close to me, behind and on the left, and put his arm around me. He lifted my arm with his and pressed the gun into my right hand. He pushed his other hand against it too.”

Christianson dug in his pocket, pulled out his badge case, and stepped closer until his side pressed against hers. It affected her in a stunning, shocking way. Awareness of him, not as a police detective, but as a man, crashed through her, sending a strange sizzle through her veins. Impossible. She shivered. He might be good-looking, but he despised her, or at least gave a good imitation of it. That didn’t stop her body from reacting to his nearness. Prickles of awareness spread along her skin everywhere he touched.

He put an arm around her and lifted her wrist the way the killer had earlier. Mimicking the earlier scene, he stuffed the badge case into her hand and brought up his other arm. For a devastating moment, she was back in Vince’s study with a crazy, dangerous man forcing a gun into her hand.

The shiver started at the base of her spine and spread upward. “No. No!”

“Calm down,” Christianson said.

Hennesy picked up her coffee cup, brought it to her, and held it while she took a drink. It had cooled to lukewarm but still helped steady her as it settled in her stomach.

Christianson moved closer again and wrapped his arms around her. The position meant his body pressed against her back, and warmth from him penetrated through their clothes. She craved that warmth even as she recognized the danger of it.

He nudged at her finger, just as the killer had earlier. In pushing her hand against the case, he pressed on a sore spot. She gasped and flinched.

Christianson stopped.

“Are you all right?” Hennesy asked. “What happened?”

She looked at the finger. “I’m getting a bruise. Where he pushed my finger on the trigger.”

Christianson stepped to the side, raised her hand and turned it so the light fell on it. He and Hennesy both looked. Neither could miss the dark smudge across the back of her finger. The men glanced at each other.

Christianson shrugged. “Let’s get back to it.”

They acted out the rest of the scenario. She told them about how her arms had jerked up with each shot, but the man had pulled them back down to point the gun again and squeeze her finger back.

Why did it feel good to have the detective’s arm around her? That was so stupid. She didn’t dare think about him as anything but an enemy.

He flinched when she moved. He pressed tightly against her, and she felt the sudden tension that tightened muscles in his arm. Not just muscles in his arms. Proof that he wasn’t entirely indifferent to her prodded at her lower back.

They finished the role-play of the scene. Hennesy stayed quiet for a few moments, his expression thoughtful. Christianson’s blank look didn’t give anything away.

A cell phone buzzed and Hennesy pulled it out of his pocket and answered. After a moment he looked at Christianson and nodded toward the exit.

“Evidence needs a DNA sample and we need to get your fingerprints for comparison,” Christianson said as he followed his partner to the door. “I’ll send someone in for you. We’ll be back in a minute.”

Christianson shut the door behind him.

Exhaustion made her sag in the chair. Her head throbbed and her body ached. She missed the warmth of the man’s body. For a few minutes it had melted some of the ice freezing her, but the cold began spreading again. The uncertainty tormented her.

Were they going to arrest her for Vince’s murder?