Читать книгу The Detective's Dilemma - Karen McCullough - Страница 6

Jay followed Sam into the hall.

“I’ll need pictures of her hands,” Sam said into the phone. “Marcia got some earlier, but the bruises might not have come out then. Make sure they’re time-stamped. Right.” He ended the call.

“What have they got?” Jay asked.

“Faint trace of a footprint on the walkway outside heading toward the driveway. Same print as the ones inside leading to the side door. No shoes in the place with a trace of blood on them except the ones the victim wore, none that match the print. No sign of a break-in, either.”

“Not much. What do you think? Do we charge her?”

“It’s a wild story, but she’s consistent with it.”

“She’s smart enough to pull it off.”

Sam frowned and shook his head. “Smart enough, maybe. But I don’t think she’s got the kind of ice-water in her veins it would take.”

“She could have set it up. Maybe with someone who wanted him out of the picture. If he had mob connections, he had enemies too.”

“Enemies who could have done this. They might have seen her as the perfect patsy. If she’s telling the truth, they were making sure we’d have an obvious suspect and not look any further. In fact, if it weren’t for the shoeprint, there wouldn’t be much of anything to dispute it.”

“It still seems too…unbelievable.”

Sam stared at him for a second. “Jay, are you sure you’re being entirely impartial on this?”

“What?”

“She looks a bit like Theresa.”

“No.”

“And she’s a damsel in distress. You sure you’re not fighting your inner white knight so hard you’re not leaning too far the other way?”

Jay clenched his hands into tight fists as he glared at his partner. “I don’t believe this. The situations are totally different.”

“Are they? Look, I understand. Theresa did a number on you. Nobody blames you. But you’ve got to know it’s there and allow for it.”

“You don’t trust my judgment?”

“Not what I’m saying. Just saying that what Theresa did makes you distrust your own instincts about women, especially young, attractive women in difficult situations.”

Jay froze in place, willing the anger to recede, forcing his body to relax before he throttled his partner. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m too tired to figure this out. What do you think about Sarah Martin?”

“My gut says she’s telling the truth. She didn’t waffle on the story or contradict herself. The bruise on her finger supports it too. She didn’t even seem to know it was there until you pressed on it. There were a couple of others on her hand, if you looked closely. And there’s no obvious motive. The will’s too easy to check. She’d know there was no point in lying about it. Quick survey says she loses big-time with Capelli’s death. Her sugar daddy’s gone. And Capelli likely had the kind of enemies who could pull this off if they had a reason.”

“I’m still not sure I’m buying it, but if we go with it, where does it take us?”

“Lots of homework.”

“Hold her as a material witness?”

“Maybe we could.” Sam tapped his chin a few times. “Those footprints make a pretty strong case for an intruder, unless we can find the shoe that did it. She gets a lawyer, she won’t be hanging around long anyway. Don’t see how we can prove flight risk except that she’s got no family to hold her here. No place else to go either. I make it about fifty-fifty we get the warrant. But you know, we might get further if we don’t try to hold her.”

“Just let her go?”

Sam flipped pages on the legal pad. “Yeah, but one of us keeps a close eye on her. It might not have been just coincidence or convenience that someone tried to set her up for it.”

“You don’t think she’ll run?”

“She was concerned about missing classes today. Doesn’t sound like someone likely to light out. Anyway, she says she has no other relatives. Where’s she going to go?”

“I suppose I know which assignment I get.”

Sam laughed harshly. “Well I’m not the young, good-looking one here.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “I doubt she sees me that way. Probably hates my guts by now.”

“I expect it’s more complicated than that. And you can change her mind.”

“Even if I don’t want to?”

“Are you sure you don’t?”

“I wish you’d stop answering questions with questions.”

Sam laughed. “Habit. Go play white knight, and then get some sleep. I’m going home and catch a few myself.”

Jay nodded reluctantly. Sarah Anne Martin was a pretty young woman and all the more dangerous to him for it. He went back to the room where they’d left her and found it empty, but as he walked back out in the corridor, an evidence specialist came toward him with the young woman beside him.

“Done?”

The evidence guy nodded.

“Did you get the pictures of her hands?”

Another curt nod before the man departed.

“I’m heading out,” Jay said to Sarah. “Where would you like me to drop you? Have you got friends or relatives you can stay with?”

She stopped and stared at him. “You’re not going to arrest me?”

“Not right now. You got any relatives you can stay with for a while?”

“No. Can’t I just go home?”

He shook his head. “The house is a crime scene.”

“But… I don’t know where else…” Dark semicircles smudged the skin beneath her eyes. She rubbed at a temple.

“There’s a hotel not too far from here.”

“I guess I’ll have to, but I don’t have clothes or anything.”

“Why don’t you go there and get some sleep, and I’ll have someone bring you some things.”

“Thank you. That’s kind of you, Detective.” She sounded exhausted.

He restrained an impulse to rub her tense shoulders and neck. She was a murder suspect. And he didn’t do the white knight thing anymore. He’d learned his lesson about the costs of trying to rescue maidens in distress. Learned it the hard way.

Jay drove her to the hotel and waited while she registered to be sure he knew her room number. She had no car and very little cash so the odds she’d be going anywhere were slim, but he gave the desk clerk his number and asked him to call if he saw her leave. Then he headed back to his apartment to grab a few hours of sleep. It would be another long day.

* * * *

Sarah’s cell phone buzzed almost as soon as she got inside the hotel room.

“Sarah?” Marc Capelli’s voice sounded rough. “I just heard about Dad. I can’t believe it. We’re all stunned. Are you all right? Were you there when it happened?”

Marc, the younger of Vince’s sons, was also by far the nicer of the two.

“Yes. I’m okay, but I just spent all night with the cops and I need some sleep.”

“Cripes. They didn’t arrest you or anything?”

“No. I’m not sure why not. I’m pretty sure they think I did it. In a way I did.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m too tired right now, Marc. I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay. You need anything now?”

“Not at the moment.”

She hung up and took a quick hot shower to wash off the blood before she crawled between the covers.

A pounding on the door woke her several hours later. She hastily donned the jeans and sweater before she looked through the peephole. A uniformed cop held up a badge so she could see it. Was he here to arrest her? Sighing, she opened the door a crack.

“Miss Martin? I’ve got some clothes and things for you.” The young officer didn’t linger after he’d handed her the rolling case from her closet. Someone had stuffed a random assortment of underwear, jeans, shoes, and tops into it, but it was enough. She took another long hot shower, washed her hair, and dried it with the hotel’s dryer. By the time she finished it was after noon. She’d missed all her classes for the day.

She called Marc back and told him the entire story, including Vince’s words about the key. He was shocked, of course, and outraged.

“The police do realize you’re not guilty, right? They’re out looking for the real culprits?”

Sarah sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t tell if they believe me or not. But I do think they’re professional enough to investigate all possibilities.”

“Poor Dad. I still can’t believe it happened. It must have been hideous.”

“It was, believe me.”

“Why, though? I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill him.”

“That’s the question. I don’t think the cops have any idea, except that the intruders seemed to be searching for something. His office was all torn up.”

“Any idea if they found it?”

“No clue. But… Maybe they did. Would they have shot him, if they hadn’t?”

“Good question. God, I don’t believe this happened. What did he mean about a ‘key’?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t have any keys that I can’t account for.”

Marc drew in a long, deep breath. “Very strange. Any idea when they’ll let us have the funeral?”

“You’d have to ask the cops about that.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m just sitting down to think about it.”

“Keep in touch,” he said. “And if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

She thanked him and ended the call. The enormity of her situation hit her then. She had just enough savings to cover two more years at the community college and another two at a state university, without living expenses, but no job, few friends, and no place to live. No Vince to help her with problems, to listen to her, to…

Grief surged over her and swept her away on a tide of weeping. Vince had been too young to die. No one should have his life ended so suddenly and brutally. The scene in his office last night… She squeezed her eyes closed against the memory, pressing until colored stars filled her vision. Those shots hitting Vince would fill her dreams for a long time.

After a while the worst of it calmed. She wiped away tears and splashed cold water on her face. She had things to do.

A pad and pen sat on the bedside table. Sarah picked up the pen and began making a list. She needed to start planning for a future that had taken a radical change of direction. A new place to live went at the top of the list. Some place cheap. She’d have to look at her savings, too, and figure out how far the money could stretch. If she were careful, she might have enough to pay for living expenses for this year plus pay the next semester’s tuition school before she had to find a job. That would get her halfway to the associate degree with enough left to cover her tuition for the next three years if she could find a job to cover living expenses.

Another knock sounded. She crossed the room to look through the peephole. Detective Christianson. She opened the door and stared at him, tamping down a surprising surge of excitement. Sunlight gleamed on his damp dark hair. A navy blue sport jacket showed off broad shoulders, and dark trousers encased long legs.

“You look better.” He scanned from her hair to her shoes and back. “We’d like you to come back down to the station and help us sort out some of Vince’s papers and things.”

The detective looked better too. The tired lines on his face had eased and muscles in his jaw relaxed. The change made his expression warmer and less intimidating. That might be wishful thinking on her part. Or it might be an act on his.

“Are you arresting me?” she asked.

“No. Not yet. We want your help.”

“You still think I killed him, though.”

Christianson’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “You pulled the trigger.”

The reminder cut through her like a knife to the gut. She drew a breath and held herself rigid until she could control her emotions. She would not cry in front of this man. “Not because I wanted to.” The words almost didn’t get past the constriction in her throat.

“I--” He stopped and gestured toward the parking lot. “Let’s see if we can figure out who did want you to, then.”

Once in his car, she asked, “Do you have any leads?”

“We’ve barely begun to look into it.”

“Oh. Do you have any idea when I can get back into the house? Not to live. I know it doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t have the right to live there anymore. But to get my things. And my car. The car is mine--I mean the title is in my name--and I need it to get to classes and to look around for a place to live now.”

“I don’t know about the house. It could be a while before it’s released. I’ll ask about your car. We might be able to get that back to you in a day or two.”

“That long?” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to get the bus to class tomorrow.”

His lips twisted in an ironic grin. “Most people are glad to have an excuse to skip classes.”

“I can’t afford to goof off, maybe even fail a class. Now more than ever.”

“Why not?” He sounded genuinely curious rather than suspicious.

“Because I don’t have anyone else to depend on. There’s only me. Even before…before Vince died I knew I couldn’t expect to live off him, forever. Eventually I’d have to depend on myself. That’s why I’ve been going to school to get the GED for the last two years, and now I’m working on the associate degree. If I’m ever going to make something of myself, I’ve got to have an education. More than just the associate degree, too. I want a real college degree. You can’t get a good job these days without it. My mom used to tell us that all the time. You can’t get ahead in this world without the college degree.”

“What will you do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. Make myself into somebody.”

“Somebody?” They stopped at a traffic light and he turned to stare at her.

She met his eyes for a moment. “Somebody who matters. A person who has a place in the world.”

“You don’t think you’re someone who matters now? Doesn’t every person matter?”

“Do I? When you first saw me last night, what did you think? Did you think, ‘she might be someone with interesting opinions about things I might want to talk about, or someone who might do something important in the world?’ Of course not. You saw me and thought, ‘She’s a rich man’s pretty plaything. A parasite. And probably greedy enough to murder her lover for his money.’ You did. I saw it on your face.”

“Mostly I thought ‘this woman was just involved in a murder and it’s my job to sort out the facts.’” Christianson didn’t say anything more for a moment as he turned the car into the parking lot of the police station. “You have a point, though.”

“I know. You think I’m thrilled about it? When I was desperate to keep my sister comfortable, to keep us from ending up on the street--literally--I traded on the only asset I had. My looks. I don’t want to be in that position again. Ever. I want to have something else the world values. A skill or knowledge. I’m not really smart, but I’m not stupid either. I just need the education.”

He parked the car, turned off the engine, and looked at her. His lips relaxed out of the ironic twist and the lines around his eyes gentled. Not that his expression had softened particularly, but it didn’t seem quite as condemning. Or maybe it wasn’t as condescending.

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all,” he said.

“It probably makes me more likely to have murdered Vince.”

The man stiffened--an interesting reaction, though she couldn’t guess what brought it on.

Finally he said, “I can’t comment on that.” He got out and walked around the car to open the door for her.

They went into the police station through a back entrance. He escorted her down a long drab hall and then into a room that held a dozen or so desks. Four of them were occupied, while several other people stood around or sat beside them. A couple of people spoke on the phone. Others talked to each other. The rumble of several different conversations and the constant buzzing of phones made her wonder how any work got done.

Jay led the way to a desk near the far corner, his apparently, since he sat in the chair behind it. She plopped down in the rough wooden seat pushed against its side. While most of the desks looked like a tornado had passed through the building, emptying file drawers and scattering the contents across every available surface, Christianson’s was surprisingly neat. File folders sat in carefully aligned piles along the back and corners. A familiar book lay in the middle--Vince’s calendar.

Several boxes stacked on the other side of the desk, against the wall, held the contents of Vince’s filing cabinets according to the labels on them.

Christianson flipped through the calendar, got to the current date, which had no entries and began to work his way backward. He stopped frequently to point to a particular note and ask what it might mean, or to question who a first name referred to.

Some of them she didn’t know, but she did identify several people Vince had met over the past few months and interpreted a few of the scribbled notes. While they worked, Sam Hennesy came in, said hello, settled in at the next desk down the row, and later came over and took a stack of folders from the top box. He sat and thumbed through them.

When he reached the beginning of the year in the calendar, Christianson flipped to the current date again and paged forward to check future scheduled items. Meanwhile, Hennesy occasionally leaned back and twisted around to ask her about things he found in the files.

Once he’d gone through the calendar, Christianson also grabbed file folders from the box.

They worked for a couple of hours. Both men occasionally stopped to answer the phone, but for the most part they kept reading through papers and questioning her about things they found. She had no idea if she told them anything useful or if they came on anything that might help identify the killers or who’d hired them.

Her cell phone rang somewhere around five.

“Sarah?” Marc identified himself. “I stopped by the hotel to see you, but you weren’t there. Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m with the police. We’re going through some of your dad’s stuff.”

At the last words, Christianson turned toward her.

“Any clues to who killed him?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“I was thinking,” Marc said. “If you need a place to stay, we’ve got a spare room.”

“You know how Jeannie feels about me.” Marc’s long-time live-in girlfriend had hated Sarah from the moment they’d met.

“Yeah, but she’ll lump it if I tell her it’s happening.”

“Thanks, but I’m going to look for an apartment.”

“If you’re sure. Let me know when you’ve found a place. Don’t lose touch.”

“Okay.” She ended the call.

Christianson asked, “Which one of the sons was that?” The ice was back in his eyes and voice.

“The younger. Marc. He’s always been nice to me.”

“How did he feel about his father?”

“As far as I know they got along okay. The older brother, Dan, though… I don’t think he ever forgave his father for divorcing his mother. And I was the icing on that resentment cake.”

“Did he resent it enough to kill him?”

She rolled that possibility around in her mind. “It’s kind of hard to believe, but I guess it’s possible. I can’t imagine why he would’ve waited this long, though. I’ve been…I was with Vince for three years.”

Christianson scribbled notes on a legal pad. Once he finished, he got up. “I think we’re done with this for the moment.” He looked over at Hennesy. “Got any more questions?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll take you back to the hotel,” Christianson said. “I’ll see if I can get evidence to release your car. It may take a couple of days. Let me have your cell number and I’ll give you a call.”

She gave him the number and stood.

On the way home, he stopped at a fast-food sandwich place. “I’m hungry,” he said as he pulled into the drive-through lane. “You?”

“Starving. I slept through lunch.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t realize it until just now.”

In addition to his own food, he bought her a sandwich, French fries, and a soda. When she offered a five-dollar bill, he refused to take it and said he’d put it on his expense report. As they pulled out of the parking lot, she noticed a machine dispensing newspapers and asked if he could stop long enough for her to get one.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you for a news junkie,” he said when she got back in the car. He must have seen her expression change because he added, “Wait. This isn’t about brains or knowledge. It’s about interests.”

She let out a breath and nodded. “You’re right. I bought it for the classifieds and the rental guide. I need to find an apartment. Fast. And cheap.”

“Most cheap apartments are in places a young woman should not be living by herself.”

“You have a better idea? I don’t have a lot of money to spend. Even if I get a part-time job, the only things I can do won’t earn a whole lot.”

“I’ll ask around. But do me a favor. Check with me before you commit to a place. I’ll tell you if there’s a serious risk or not.”

“All right. Can I get your number?”

After he’d turned into the hotel parking lot and stopped, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card. “The number’s on here. Give me a call about the apartment. Also if you think of anything or come across anything that might relate to who wanted Capelli dead.”

“I will. Detective…” She stared at him. The sun rested just above the horizon, its rays coming from behind and to one side, outlining him in a halo of light. For a moment, she saw the man and not just the police detective. Scary, because he was a damned appealing man. Handsome, but not pretty-handsome the way a few of the nicer looking guys in some of her classes were. More rugged-handsome, with echoes of his life already showing on his lean, angular face. The strong muscle, controlled expression, and the tense lines that bracketed his mouth hinted at a man who’d seen unspeakable things, had suffered personal setbacks, yet retained a fundamental strength and integrity. The sunlight also picked out a few silver threads in his dark brown hair, though she didn’t think he could be older than his mid-thirties and was probably a couple of years younger than that.

This was scary and dangerous. The man likely thought her guilty of murder. She couldn’t afford to regard him as anything but an enemy, which made his kindness all the more insidious. He might be doing it to get closer to her in hopes she’d somehow betray her guilt.

Yet… The way he examined her face, gaze lingering on her lips and cheeks, suggested some awareness on his part as well. And the slight twist of his lips indicated he wasn’t any happier about the attraction.

A horn blared nearby, jolting them out of the distraction. His expression reverted to its professional remoteness.

“What time is your first class tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday? Nine.”

“I’ll ask tonight and see what we can do about your car.”

Sarah reached for the door. “I hate to push it, but can I ask for one more thing?”

“What?”

“My books and papers and laptop. They’re all in a bag in my room. I’ll need them. I’m behind in my homework now.”

“I’ll ask about those, too.”

“Thank you for supper and all your help.” She opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind her.

He pulled out of the parking space as soon as she’d made it to the hotel room door.