Dead Lies (18 page)

CHAPTER 19

A
NNA AND KREEGER SPENT THE MORNING AND PART OF THE NEXT
afternoon in the conference room, taking another, closer look at every piece of paper they’d removed from the Vance’s house. It was painstaking work.

They came up with, in a word,
nada
.

Just as Anna decided to go for a stretch outside, Web walked into the conference room, trailed by Wilmer the tech expert. Wilmer looked like a scrawny geek next to well-built Web.

Kreeger stood up. “Find anything?” They two men had at Wilmer’s desk for the last two hours looking through all of Serena and Bill’s computer files.

“No,” Web answered, looking defeated. “I’ve got to get going though. The wake starts in a couple of hours.” His voice was full of lead. “Is there anything else I can do before I head out?”

“We’ll take it from here,” said Kreeger gently. “Thanks again for coming in.”

“I’ll walk him out,” Anna offered.

Kreeger looked at her and nodded.

She led Web through the detectives’ room, passing Kreeger’s cluttered desk and De Luca’s even messier one. The County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t nearly as fancy an office as the Avondale P.D., but in the few days Anna had been working here it had already begun to feel like home.

Web pushed open the door that led to the parking lot out back, and she followed him onto the asphalt. Melting snow glistened on the pavement, a clear sign that sun was making ever-growing dents in the piles of dirty snow lining the parking lot. The temperature had spiked to the mid-fifties, and today it felt positively balmy. Web held his hand up to the sun and said, “Think there’s anything to this global warming thing?”

She laughed.

“Damn,” said Web.

“What?”

“With all that computer stuff, I forgot to tell Kreeger. There
were
some things missing from the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bill had a pair of onyx and gold cuff links that my parents gave him for his birthday and a Russian army watch he bought when we went to Chicago last year. I noticed both items were missing when we went through the house yesterday, and I didn’t see them on the list of stuff found in the dumpster. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

“Could Bill have lent them to someone?” she asked.

Web looked at her funny then shook his head. “Guys don’t really do that sort of thing.”

Anna swallowed a smile. It had been a while since she’d inhabited the world of men. “The man who attacked you could have slipped them into his pocket while he was looking for… whatever he was looking for,” she said.

“Maybe.” He sighed. “At least they weren’t valuable. Maybe $1,000 in total.”

Anna hid her surprise. A thousand bucks sure sounded like a lot of money to her.

“Not that it matters now,” Web added tiredly.

Anna frowned. She and Kreeger had both rejected the idea that Web’s assailant was a common thief. They’d assumed he was looking for something related to the original crime. But in light of this new information, it was possible the assailant could have simply been a callous individual capitalizing on a tragedy—and not connected to the original crime at all. There were plenty of cases of thieves picking their marks out of the obituary column and breaking in when the families were at the funeral.

On the other hand, the police car out front would have spooked a professional thief. And from everything Web had said about his attacker, the guy knew what he was doing.

No, the thief scenario didn’t feel right. The second attacker was related to the original crime. Anna could
feel
it.

“I’ll mention this to Detective Kreeger,” she said.

“Thanks, Anna.”

“And I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

He looked down, blinking at her in surprise. “You sure you want to come? I mean, it could be hard…bring up some painful memories. I’ll understand if you don’t.”

She put a hand on his arm. “I want to. It’s been over a year. I’ll be fine.”

“All right, Anna,” he said gratefully. “Thanks. I’ll see you later then.” He walked to his car and waved before getting in. She watched him drive away before going back inside.

Anna took her time getting back to the conference room. She checked her cell phone for messages—just one from her mother checking in to say everything was okay—then made a pit stop to the ladies room. She used the facilities then washed her hands and splashed water on her face. She looked in the mirror and groaned inwardly. The shadows under her eyes seemed to have deepened, and she noticed how pale she looked, even beneath the olive tones. She recalled how her mother often reminded her that a woman over 35 should never leave the house without blush. She was probably right.

When she got back to the conference room, she saw that Kreeger had taken off his suit jacket and had his nose back in the pile of investment reports. She stood next to the table and looked at the remains of his ham and Swiss sandwich, wrinkling her nose at the pungent, oily scent. “Want me to toss that?”

He looked at it. “Uh, sure.”

She balled the sandwich up in the brown bag it had come in and took the shot to the garbage can in the corner. It danced on the rim then sank in. She scored another two points from the other side of the table, with her own half-eaten roast beef sandwich.

“Nice shooting, LeBron,” Kreeger said without looking up.

Anna quickly filled Kreeger in about the cuff links and watch. He sat back in his chair for a moment while they discussed the possibilities. He agreed the assailant could have grabbed the items simply because they were there—but that it wasn’t likely, considering how Web hadn’t noticed him carrying anything. And nothing had fallen out of his pockets in the fight. But if the intruder hadn’t taken the items, where had they gone?

“Put it in the report,” he said finally. “And we’ll follow up when we find him.”

Anna sat down and turned her attention back to the materials laid out in front of her. A few minutes later she closed the manila folder holding the couples’ tax returns for the past five years and set it aside. As far as she could tell, there was nothing there. She’d always had a hard time making sense of tax forms, so she wasn’t sure how thorough she’d been, but she didn’t tell Kreeger that. She was glad he’d gone through the pages himself, essentially checking her work.

Setting that folder aside, she grabbed another file containing the Vance’s savings account statements. Like all the others, it was labeled in blue magic marker in Serena’s neat handwriting. Web had told them his sister was the record-keeper in the family, and to Anna it appeared she’d done a hell of a job of it. Everything from their bank and credit card statements to their utility bills and cancelled checks was filed in chronological order, with the most recent items on top. Nothing was out of place.

She knew many people who kept only digital records, but not Serena. Anna was grateful for her old-school style of record keeping. It had saved them the trouble of printing everything out.

She opened the new file and yawned. “I could really use a cup of coffee,” she said.

“There’s a pot in the kitchen,” Kreeger said. “Help yourself.”

“I said
coffee
, Jerry, not
offal
.”

He gave her a bemused look. “That’s too bad, because I was going to ask you to get me a cup while you were up.”

They were silent for a few minutes then Kreeger said, “Anna, did you get those pictures you took at the crime scene developed?”

She had. She’d picked them up this morning at the twenty-four-hour-photo store and looked through them in the car. “Yes, they’re in my purse.”

“Were they helpful?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have bothered. The official shots were much more…comprehensive.” She didn’t tell him that she regretted taking them. She’d been too eager. It was a rookie move.

“Can I see them?”

“Sure.” She got up and walked over to the chair by the wall. She picked up her purse and fished out the envelope of photos. She brought them over to Kreeger and handed them over. He flipped through them once slowly then looked at them again, a little faster this time.

“See anything?” she asked when he was done.

“Not really.”

She thought she saw something in his look that said otherwise. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” He slipped the photos back in her sleeve and slid them toward the middle of the table. “Let’s keep them with the file, though, okay?”

“You got it.”

They got back to work. Anna tried hard to focus, but she found she couldn’t sit still. She stood up and walked to the end of the table, then back. She turned to Kreeger. “If it wasn’t for the attack on Web yesterday, I’d be thinking his theory about this being a case of mistaken identity was correct,” she said. “This couple seemed perfect. There doesn’t seem to be any reason someone would want them killed.”

He looked at her above his reading glasses. “Not yet, at least.”

“Come on,” Anna said, holding up her left hand and ticking the fingers off with her right. “They were well-liked by everyone we interviewed. No one made any threats against them. There’s no indication either one was having an affair. They didn’t take drugs or gamble. Even Bill’s one-year stint as a police officer was without incident.” She’d run out of fingers, so she lowered her hand. “It seems to me that they were the most normal couple in the world.”

Kreeger opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off. “I know, I know. You’re gonna say, ‘there’s no such thing as normal, Anna. And there’s no such thing as perfect’ So shut up and keep digging.’”

He smiled. “What, you’re a great cook
and
a mind reader?” He took off his glasses and laid them on the table. He placed his forearms down on the surface and leaned in. “There’s a money motive here,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Her pulse quickened. Cop instincts. She liked where this was going. “But I thought detectives weren’t supposed to act on gut instinct,” she teased.

“We can, but only if we’ve backed up our instincts with good old-fashioned legwork.” He paused. “Plus, there’s always a money motive, even when it’s not immediately apparent. I once worked a case where a woman and her husband—a known drug dealer—were murdered in their apartment. We assumed the husband was killed over a bad deal and the woman simply got in the way, but when we arrested the guy who did it, we realized we were wrong. Turns out the guy was having an affair with the drug dealer’s wife while the dealer was away in prison. Apparently the drug dealer found out about the affair while he was in the clink, and after he got sprung, he tracked the guy down. He taunted him, telling him his wife had herpes and that he knew this because
he’d
given it to her. Sure enough, the perp had caught it, and it made him crazy. He confessed that this was the reason he popped the couple.”

“Revenge,” Anna nodded. “But I thought you said the motive was money.”

“I was getting to that part. We caught the guy with fingerprints, and the guy made a full confession. He said he’d waited to kill the couple on Friday because he knew that on Thursday the drug dealer would be getting paid for a shipment.” Kreeger laughed. “He figured he could kill two birds with one stone. We didn’t even know any money was missing!”

Anna grinned, loving the story. How
practical
the enraged ex-lover had been. She tapped her file, getting serious again. “So, you’re saying there’s a money motive in here and we’re just missing it?”

“I don’t know, but maybe,” answered Kreeger. “If so, all we have to do is find it.”

Anna sighed with frustration. Her arms were sore from all the paper pushing, and she had a stinging paper cut on her left index finger. “And if we don’t?”

“We wait for the lab to nail Lester Malik with fingerprints and arrest the son-of-a-bitch.”

“What if he doesn’t give up the guy who hired him for murder?”

Kreeger sat back in his seat and rubbed his hands together excitedly. “I have ways of making people talk. I feed them something I’ve cooked, and the whole story usually spills out.”

Anna laughed.

“Have you ever thought about becoming a homicide detective, Anna?” Kreeger asked after a moment.

“Why? You looking for a new partner?”

“No, seriously.”

Becoming a detective was all Anna had been thinking about since this whole thing started. “Yes,” she admitted. “I started studying for the exam right before I moved.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, you couldn’t have landed a better first case.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because most of the time we know who the murderer is right away, and putting the perp away is just a matter of building a case. But this one is a real puzzle. And after we solve it, every other case you land will seem like a piece of cake.”

“So I think what you’re saying again is, ‘Shut up and keep digging’?”

He laughed. “Yeah.”

An hour later Anna thought she’d found something. Maybe. There was a small break in the couple’s ATM withdrawal pattern. She hadn’t noticed it two days ago because then she’d been looking for unusually large amounts. Now, open to
anything
, the numbers gave her pause. Almost all of the withdrawals were made in the amount of $200, $300 or $400, except for one for $560. An oddly specific amount.