Revenge of Innocents Read online

  “I spoke to Cameron Wheeler this morning,” Brad told her, referring to the head of the agency. “He agreed to transfer in three officers from field services. Veronica’s death has shaken up a lot of people, Carolyn. Wheeler wants you to work in conjunction with the PD until this is resolved. He talked to the chief over there, and they’re putting together a task force. Hank Sawyer will run the show. You and he are big buddies, so I’m sure he’ll be glad to have you.” He stood and stretched his back. “You’re still going to have to pinch-hit for us. I’m trying to narrow down these transfers to officers with prior experience in investigations, but right now I’ll take anyone with a heartbeat.”

  “That means training,” Carolyn said, feeling overwhelmed again.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said. “On the day we had the blackout, I was curious so I counted heads to see who was missing once the lights came back on. Everyone was accounted for except Veronica and Stuart Greenly. She came in first. He came in about five minutes later.”

  “But Stuart is married. I went to his wedding. His wife is a former model. They’ve only been married about a year. Not only that, he’s in his late twenties. Why would he be interested in a woman almost old enough to be his mother?”

  “He’s a man,” Brad said. “Nothing says you have to be in love with a woman to have sex with her. If Veronica was offering it, not many guys would turn her down. Want to grab a bite in the cafeteria?”

  “Not after that speech,” Carolyn said, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m glad you reminded me of why we broke up. Whether you believe it or not, there are men out there who aren’t interested in having sex with anyone they can get.”

  Brad stomped his foot, flashing his megawatt smile. “Damn, you’re cute when you’re mad.” He placed his arm around her neck, pulling her to him. “Don’t you feel better now?” he whispered in her ear. “Put that to work for you, and you’ll catch your killer. All this stuff about a person being innocent until proven guilty is for the courts, not the street. Everyone is a suspect, even me.”

  Out of necessity, Carolyn abandoned her rule of not eating junk food and steered the Infiniti through the drive-through at In and Out Burgers. She inhaled her cheeseburger before she hit the next traffic light, then began picking at her fries.

  She’d been trying to reach Drew all morning, but the line had been busy. He’d either taken the phone off the hook, or he was making calls to relatives. She decided to stop by the house on the way to the police station. She hoped he’d told the children by now. A second later, she changed her mind about seeing him.

  Brad might be an insensitive oaf on occasion, but his advice was usually sound. She needed to fuel herself on outrage, not grief and sadness. Veronica would want her death to be avenged, and outside of her husband, no one would care as much as Carolyn. Walking into a houseful of weeping children could put her back where she was yesterday. She dialed Drew again. This time he answered.

  “KADY has a broadcast van in front of my house,” he said, out of breath. “I caught one of their damn reporters with his nose against the boys’ bedroom window. What do these people want from me? Veronica wasn’t a celebrity.”

  Murder sells, Carolyn thought. “Everything will blow over in a few days, Drew. You can stay with me if you want. Either that, or check into a hotel.”

  “I’m on the phone,” he said to one of the children. “I promise I’ll come to your room in a minute.” He picked up where he left off with Carolyn. “I can’t stay in a hotel. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for Veronica’s funeral.”

  Carolyn wondered if they had life insurance. Even if they did, the company might not settle the claim until the coroner made an official ruling as to the cause of death. “Have you heard from Jude yet?”

  “No,” he said. “Crystal is bringing her things over tonight. I’ll go out and try to track her down again. She wasn’t supposed to move in until next week.”

  “Where is this woman going to stay?”

  “In Stacy and Jude’s room,” he told her. “I’ll move Stacy’s twin bed into the master. As far as I’m concerned, Jude doesn’t live here anymore. Veronica and I had already decided to kick her out last week.”

  “Do you really want to do that right now?” Carolyn asked him, shocked that he would be so heartless. “She just lost her mother. Where will she live? How will she support herself?”

  “That’s her problem,” Drew said. “Jude is resourceful, Carolyn. She’ll probably move in with one of her friends, or shack up with one of the punks she hangs out with. I can’t have that kind of element around my house.”

  “Did Jude go back to school?”

  “Shit, no,” he said. “We were going to send her to college, but she blew that. Why? What did you hear?”

  “Rebecca saw her at Ventura High. She was under the impression Jude was enrolled in classes, that she was trying to get the credits she needed to acquire her diploma.”

  “I need to get off the phone,” Drew told her. “The kids need me and I have to pick up the house before Crystal gets here. Things are bad enough without her thinking she’s moving into a pigsty. If I hear from Jude, I’ll let you know.”

  “Please,” Carolyn said. “Have the police talked to you yet, Drew?”

  “They were over here this morning. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to them. They don’t think I killed her, I hope. They wanted to know where I was yesterday morning. I took the day off to do some things around the house. Veronica was after me to put up some shelves in the boys’ room, so I went to Home Depot. I spent the rest of the day puttering around in the garage.”

  “Did you buy anything at Home Depot?”

  “No,” he said. “I just wanted to figure out how much it would cost.”

  Carolyn said she’d speak to him later and disconnected. She got the number for Ventura High and waited while the cell operator connected her. A woman in the principal’s office confirmed that Jude was enrolled as a student. She started to call Drew back and tell him, then decided to think it over first. If Jude was going to school, why hadn’t she told her parents? Something didn’t fit, and when something didn’t fit, it could be important.

  Carolyn thought she’d made a fairly good start on a crime of this magnitude. Drew couldn’t prove where he was at the time of the crime, and Jude was trying to put her life together without telling her parents, even though they’d threatened to throw her out on the street.

  She turned onto Dee Drive where the police department was located, parked, and reached into the backseat to get her computer notebook. She remembered what Brad had told her as she walked toward the front of the building. Everyone is a suspect.

  Carolyn couldn’t imagine anyone with that many children not carrying life insurance. How much did Drew have Veronica insured for? If she’d been having an affair, he could have found out and killed her.

  Drew was now a suspect with two motives, and they were the oldest in existence—jealousy and money.

  CHAPTER 7

  Wednesday, October 13—2:05 P.M.

  Carolyn strode into the homicide bay at the Ventura Police Department. She said a few words to a detective named Gabriel Martinez, and then made her way to Hank Sawyer’s office. He was on the phone. He covered the receiver with his hand. “Mary’s in the conference room. I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m free.”

  Carolyn found Mary Stevens with her head down, seated at the end of the long table, partially hidden behind stacks of papers and books.

  When the detective looked up and saw her, she gathered up a bunch of photographs. “They’re crime scene,” she said, her brows furrowed. “You might not want to look at them.”

  “In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been assigned to your task force,” Carolyn told her. “If I’m going to be involved in the case, I need to see everything.”

  “Good,” Mary said, handing her the pictures. Behind her was a large bulletin board. “I was about to put them up. I guess you might as well desensitize yo
urself to them. We’ve got them on a CD, but we’ll have to make you a copy.” Her eyes went to the notebook Carolyn was carrying. “I can give you mine and you can load them onto your hard drive if you’ve got enough memory.” She stopped speaking abruptly. “I don’t know where my head is today. Of course you don’t want them on your computer.”

  Mary glanced at a clean-cut young man sitting a few chairs to her left. “Oh, this is Keith Edwards. He’s going to do a lot of the grunt work for us. Keith, Carolyn is a supervisor at the probation department. She was a close friend of the victim.”

  Edwards appeared to be in his mid to late twenties. He had sandy blond hair and greenish eyes, and was dressed in a starched white shirt, a striped tie, and a pair of tan slacks. He had the air of a new guy trying to make an impression. He circled to the other side of the table and pumped Carolyn’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said with a southern drawl. “I’m sorry about your friend. This must be hard for you.”

  “Keith is on loan from patrol,” Mary explained. “He relocated here six months ago from Atlanta. Gary Conrad is also on the team, but he’s out beating the bushes for leads. Gabriel Martinez will pitch in whenever he can.”

  Gary was a seasoned detective. Carolyn didn’t know him that well, but she’d heard Hank and Mary talk about him. Gabriel was a good man as well.

  “You can set up anywhere you want.” Mary moved a stack of thick books aside. “These are mug shots. We’ve got the motel clerk coming in later today to see if he recognizes anyone.”

  “Did the lab have time to process the letter I got at the morgue?”

  “I’m glad you brought it up,” Mary told her. “We need to get the four morgue attendants to come in and look at mug shots.” She shuffled through her paperwork, and then punched numbers into her cell phone. While she was waiting for the call to go through, she said, “Just so you know, I take care of things whenever I think about them. That’s how I make certain I cover all the bases. My weakness is that I’m not good at delegating. If I do it myself, I know it’s done. Hank mentioned it on my last performance review, so I’m trying to improve.” She turned to her right. “Keith, call the lab and see if they’ve had time to process the envelope and letter yet.”

  Carolyn took a seat at the opposite end of the table, not wanting to be disturbed while she went through the crime scene photos. After she set them down on the table, she placed her hands in her lap and leaned forward. The first picture showed Veronica on her back in a bathtub, fully clothed. A large splatter of blood was visible on the back wall, the streaks heading downward. She must have been sitting partially upright when the killer shot her. Carolyn assumed the bullet had propelled her head backward, and then her lifeless body had slid down. Because of the tub’s curved sides, her neck was twisted at an awkward angle. Her legs were open as if she were about to give birth. Seeing her like this was worse than seeing her body at the morgue.

  Carolyn bit down on the inside of her lip, tasting her own salty blood. Whoever had done this to her sweet friend didn’t deserve to live. If she found him, she would kill him, regardless of the consequences.

  Her mind drifted into the past. She was seven years old, standing in the kitchen of her old house, peering into the oven at the chocolate chip cookies she and her mother were making. The doorbell rang and her mother went to answer it, returning and telling her it was Veronica.

  “Close your eyes,” the girl said, giggling.

  When Carolyn opened them, Veronica handed her a beautiful doll, dressed in a sparkly silver evening gown with a fake fur jacket. Earlier that afternoon, they had fought over the doll, and Veronica’s mother had sent Carolyn home in tears. When Carolyn had taken it from the shelf in Veronica’s room, she knew it was a special doll, the kind you weren’t allowed to play with. Veronica’s grandmother had sewn all the clothes by hand. She pushed the doll back toward Veronica. “I’m sorry I touched it.”

  “It’s yours now, silly,” her friend told her, refusing to take it. “Granny said I could give it to my most special friend in the world. We’re going to be friends forever. That means I’ll always be able to see it.”

  Carolyn surfaced from the past and forced herself to pick up another photo. Veronica wasn’t wearing panty hose, so the crotch of her white cotton underwear was exposed. One shoe was still attached to her foot, the other resting on the floor by the tub. She noticed what appeared to be a tan-colored cloth lying on her chest near her neck. She wasn’t certain if the crime scene officers had placed it there as a marker or the murderer used it during the crime. She sorted through the rest of the pictures, selected ten, and laid them out on the table as if she were playing a game of solitaire.

  Something looked wrong.

  Carolyn opened her notebook and powered it up, then returned her attention to the images. The tub was too clean and Veronica’s clothes didn’t appear to have any bloodstains on them. How was that possible? Mary saw her bending over the photos and sent a magnifying glass sliding across the slick surface of the table. “Thanks,” she mumbled without looking up.

  She recalled Veronica wearing an emerald-green blouse, but in the photographs it appeared darker. A moment later, she realized the blouse was wet. “The killer cleaned her up, didn’t he?”

  “Looks that way,” Mary said, holding the phone against her ear. “I’m on hold with the morgue. After he shot her, he must have soaked her in the tub to get the blood off her body and clothes. Weird, huh? He didn’t wash the blood off the wall behind her head, so why worry about the rest?”

  “Does that mean anything?”

  Mary held up a finger when the person came back on the line.

  Carolyn picked up another photograph. Veronica’s body had been turned on its side, and her blouse pulled up. It looked as if there was some kind of rash on her back. The next image showed a similar rash on her buttocks and legs.

  Mary concluded her phone call and addressed Carolyn’s question. “Charley thinks he scrubbed her with Comet. The motel maids use Comet to clean the bathrooms. He probably stole it off one of their carts.”

  “Didn’t someone hear the gunshot?”

  “The volume on the TV was turned up full blast,” Mary said, propping her head up with her fist. “As far as other guests went, most of them had either checked out or weren’t in their rooms at the time of the shooting.”

  Hank burst in, taking a position at the front of the table. Behind him was a large viewing screen. The room was also equipped with teleconferencing capabilities. Cameras were mounted along the ceiling, and in the center of the table was a microphone shaped like a pyramid. “I was going to wait and address everyone after Conrad came back in, but I wanted to make certain Carolyn was here. Veronica may have committed suicide.”

  “What?” Carolyn said, bolting to her feet at the end of the table. “If this isn’t a homicide, I don’t know what is.”

  “We obviously thought the same thing,” he said, “or we wouldn’t have put together a task force. Veronica’s gun was found in the Dumpster behind the motel. Ballistics just confirmed it’s the murder weapon.”

  “You can’t kill yourself and then go walking around,” Carolyn said, raising her voice. “Who’s the idiot who thinks it’s a suicide?”

  Mary was tapping her fingernails on the table. “I think you better explain, Hank.”

  “If you guys will stop interrupting me, I will,” he snapped. “Maria Lopez, the maid at the motel, called and changed her story. I had to get Gabriel to interpret because she doesn’t speak English. She’s here illegally and was afraid she’d be deported. She touched the gun when she bent down to see if Veronica was still alive. Instead of wiping her prints off or just waiting until we got there, she panicked and took the gun out of the room, tossing it in the Dumpster with the rest of the day’s trash.” Hank paused to catch his breath. “Lopez was planning to leave town when her neighbor talked her into coming forward.”

  “Where was the gun before she picked it up?”
Carolyn asked.

  “On the floor next to the tub,” the detective said. “Charley Young is one of the idiots who thinks there’s a possibility it was a suicide.” He paused, waiting for the officers to mill over what he’d told them. “We didn’t find Veronica’s prints on the gun. The prints we assumed were the killer’s must be the maid’s. She doesn’t have a driver’s license, so she’s never been printed. Gabriel is on his way to Lopez’s house to bring her in so we can confirm those were her prints.”

  “If Veronica shot herself,” Carolyn argued, “why weren’t her prints on the gun? You just said Lopez didn’t wipe it down. It was Veronica’s gun, so her prints had to be on it. They weren’t there because the killer cleaned the gun.”

  Mary spoke up. “We found a washrag in the tub with the body, Carolyn. It was the brand and color the motel used, so I didn’t think it had any significance. I thought it just fell in the tub from the towel rack when the killer shot her. Veronica could have wiped her own prints off, and then wrapped the washrag around the gun when she shot herself. She may not have wanted people to know that she took her own life, especially her children.”

  “Bullshit,” Carolyn said, refusing to accept it. This was a sensitive issue for her. Her father had committed suicide, and during a trying time in her brother’s life, he had also threatened to kill himself.

  Her last conversation with Veronica had occurred only hours before her death. She’d criticized her recommendation in the Patricia Baxter case. Asking an officer of Veronica’s stature to rewrite a report was like slapping her in the face. But Carolyn had let too many things slide already. Her friend’s work had become sloppy, and many of her reports were filed late. Preston had called her on it, as it reflected on the entire unit.