Dead Lies (4 page)

“What the…?” said Frank with alarm.

A piercing cry came from downstairs, making the hairs on Anna’s arms stand up and salute.

“Paul!” she gasped. She raced from the room, the other two officers at her heels. Together, the three cops bounded down the stairs, hearing commotion in the kitchen. When they reached the center hall, they instinctively separated, each heading the way they’d originally come. Even in their haste, they knew it was safest to approach from different locations. They all carefully entered the kitchen at the same moment, and the sight of what lay before them made them re-holster their weapons.

The victim’s brother was sitting in the middle of the bloody floor, his white dress shirt covered with bright red stains. He was clutching his dead sister’s body, crying, “No, no,” over and over again. His other sister was crouching behind him, one arm wrapped around him and the other pushing at Paul, who was unsuccessfully trying to pull them away. She was weeping, too.

“Serena, no,” the blond man wailed. “No!”

Paul looked up at Anna, and she saw how embarrassed he looked. He knew he’d screwed up and that the mistake might cost him his job.

“Shit,” muttered Frank, low enough so that only Anna could hear. “There goes our crime scene.”

CHAPTER 4

T
HE MAN WHO’D MURDERED THE COUPLE JUST MINUTES EARLIER GUNNED
the engine of his black Mercury Cougar and accelerated onto Route 17. His large, dark eyes glistened. He was still high from the killings. He felt the power of God coursing through his veins.

Lester Malik was pretty new to the contract killing game—this was only his third hit—but it was clear to him he’d been born to do it.
I CAN DO ANYTHING,
he thought, pumping his beefy fist on the steering wheel to the beat of an AC/DC song blasting on his CD player.
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND GOD IS THAT I GET PAID BETTER.

But in spite of the adrenaline rush, Lester had to admit things hadn’t gone as smoothly tonight as he planned. Normally an excellent marksman, his first mistake was not killing the woman with his first shot. But tonight was only the second time he’d ever fired the .22-caliber Ruger he’d purchased last month from a small arms dealer in Newark. It was the silencer that was the problem. He’d never used one before, and he hadn’t anticipated how heavy it would be, throwing him off his aim.

Lester banged the steering wheel again with his fist. He should have tested it first. But it was a rush job, and there’d been little time to prepare.

Mistake #2 was when the husband had walked into the kitchen and caught Lester killing his wife. Lester hadn’t expected that. The guy was supposed to be upstairs on the phone. Lester had seen the man through his binoculars from his perch in the jungle gym-cum-duck blind in the schoolyard behind the house. The way it should have happened—the way he’d seen it play out in his mind—was that the woman would get it first in the kitchen while the husband was busy upstairs. Then before the husband got wise and maybe called the police, Lester would head for the master bedroom and shoot him, too.

All things considered, Lester had handled the husband’s surprise visit pretty well. He’d chased the man upstairs, kicked open his bedroom door and killed him with one clean shot to the back of the head. No muss, no fuss. And this time he’d been able to correct his aim.

Then he’d grabbed the jewelry from the closet, which was so easy to find it was laughable. He snorted with contempt. Closets and dresser drawers. Most homeowners had no imagination when it came to stashing their valuables.

But the real surprise happened when he came back down to the kitchen. The woman he thought was dead had somehow gotten hold of a cell phone.

The sight of her with that thing in her hand had pissed him off so badly that he’d taken a kitchen chair and smashed it over her head again and again until she was still. Then he’d fired three bullets into her motionless body just to be safe.

He’d checked the phone to see if she had called 9-1-1 while he was upstairs, but the last call on the log wasn’t to the police. It was to somebody named Web. No last name. He wondered who the guy was. A friend? A lover? Had the woman actually called him? Why him and not 9-1-1?

Whoever Web was, it was possible
he’d
called the police. And yet it was eerily quiet in the neighborhood. If the cops had been alerted, he’d be hearing sirens any second.

He wasn’t going to stick around for that. He had to high-tail it out of there. Fast.

But being the careful professional he was, he’d quickly searched for the shell casings and then pocketed the woman’s cell phone, too. There was a chance that Web character would call back, and if he did Lester could figure out who he was and what he knew. If he didn’t, Lester would just dump it.

Crossing the back yard, Lester had disappeared between the tall trees to the schoolyard behind it. He’d slowed his steps as he walked toward his car, which was parked on an adjoining street. He’d plastered a smile on his face, trying to look like just another guy heading to a Christmas party in one of the fancy houses on the street, but fortunately he hadn’t run into anyone.

At the car, he’d retrieved the shell casings from his pocket and slipped them into the sewer by the back wheel. When he finally slid safely into the driver’s seat of the Cougar, he’d felt more relief than he cared to admit. He’d checked his watch and noted that the job had taken him less than ten minutes.

Ten minutes that had started to feel like more like ten hours.

As he’d made his way through the quiet streets of Avondale—sticking to the 25 mph speed limit so he wouldn’t be pulled over—he’d passed a speeding police car and realized how lucky he’d been. Someone had called the cops, after all.

But it didn’t matter now. He was miles away from the crime scene, on the highway, and soon he’d be home, where he could kick back on his couch with the bottle of Stoli he’d purchased yesterday. He needed something to wash down the Ritz crackers and peanut butter, which was about the only food he ever had in the house unless he called for delivery.

But he had a few more stops to make first. He flipped his blinker, once again mindful that the needed to obey even the most minor traffic laws in order to avoid attention. Pulling into the parking lot of an Exxon station, he found the restroom around back. He disposed of his gloves in the garbage, making sure they were buried deep.

His next stop was McDonald’s. After wrapping the gun in an old paper bag he’d saved for that purpose, he threw it into a trash can in the parking lot.

Cruising once again down the highway at an even 50 mph, Lester began to feel better now that he was rid of the gun. He punched the dashboard in triumph and thought about the money he’d just made for himself. It would help him to retire to Mexico in a few years, which was practically all he’d been thinking about since his most recent stint in prison. In the meantime, he’d continue to enjoy building his new business. Murder for hire. Yeah, that was good. It sounded like the name of a detective agency. Murder for Hire, Inc. Maybe he should have business cards made up. Lester Malik. Contract Killer. By appointment only.

He laughed loudly at his own joke.

A few minutes later he reached his last stop, where he’d planned to dump the final item, the bag of stolen jewelry. Turning into the parking lot of the giant supply store where yuppies just like the ones he’d just killed came to purchase equipment for do-it-yourself projects, he drove to the back of the windowless structure and parked the Cougar next to a pair of green metal dumpsters. He’d chosen this spot because he knew that by tomorrow at nine a.m. the dumpsters would be hauled away. He’d researched the sanitation schedules for all the dump sites he’d used tonight.

Turning on the light in the car to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he noticed for the first time that the leather jacket he was wearing was speckled with his victims’ blood.
Shit.
Now he’d have to get rid of that, too. Then he caught a glimpse of the dead woman’s phone.
Double shit.
That made three items.

Could he risk dumping them altogether, he wondered?

No, that would be sloppy. He couldn’t take the chance.

He changed his mind when he heard the faint sound of a siren in the distance. It was time to go home.

Bolting out of the car, he crossed the asphalt to the set of dumpsters and threw the items inside. He got quickly back into his car and pulled out of the parking lot, only breathing comfortably again after he was back on the highway, heading in the opposite direction.

When he was close to home, he could no longer hear the sirens. He wondered if he’d overreacted.

He found a parking space two blocks from his apartment and eased the Cougar in. He turned off the ignition and reached for another stolen cell phone in the glove compartment. It was the one he was using to communicate with his client.

Shit.
The dead woman’s cell phone. In his excitement, he’d forgotten to turn it off.

Another smack on the steering wheel. God, he’d really fucked up. Now some teenage sales clerk on a smoke break might hear the damn thing ring.

The thought of going back filled him with dread. He’d come a little too close to those sirens. He knew his luck was running out.

He wouldn’t go back. He reminded himself that the garbage would be removed hours before the store opened, and that reassured him. Promising himself to be more careful next time, he hit redial. After two rings, the client picked up.

“Did you do it?” the voice said.

Lester had met his client last week in a bar in Upton Park, and they’d struck up a conversation. It had started out innocently enough, with talk about the crappy weather and football, the usual barstool chatter. A few drinks later, Lester had started getting comfortable with the guy and had started boasting about how he was a man who could take care of people’s problems. Lester had to admit he’d been showing off, but the guy had seemed impressed, and that had pleased him. When the guy suggested he might be interested in Lester’s skills, he’d worried that he was a cop. But he’d quickly rejected the idea. There was
no
way. You could tell just by looking at the guy.

Lester had asked him about it anyway, if only to make himself look like a man who thought about such things. After the guy assured him he wasn’t a cop, Lester he told him he would have to check for wires all the same. So they’d slipped into the men’s room, where Lester did a quick pat-down and pronounced the guy clean. Then he suggested they move to a quiet table in the back where they could talk more privately. The guy agreed, and it was there they’d hammered out the details of the hit then shaken on it.

Lester still couldn’t believe he’d accepted the job at all. The client was nothing like his usual sort, to say the least. But money was money.

“Yeah, it’s done,” he said.

“All right. I’ll send you the rest of your fee. Same way as the advance.”

Lester salivated at the thought of $4,000 in cash that would come through the mail in a padded envelope, just like the $1,000 he’d gotten up front.

With a brief goodbye and a click of the phone, the guy was gone.

Turning the phone off, he slipped it back into the glove compartment and made a mental note to get rid of it tomorrow. This time he wouldn’t take any chances. He’d throw it into the Passaic River where no one would ever hear it ring.

Except maybe the fish.

CHAPTER 5

T
HREE AND A HALF HOURS HAD PASSED SINCE ANNA DISCOVERED THE DEAD
bodies on Pepper Crescent, and she’d already learned how a homicide investigation was run in the suburbs. Demoted to the rent-a-cop level, her colleagues from the Avondale P.D. guarded the yellow plastic tape, while detectives from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office ran the show inside.

“Stay back, please, ma’am,” she heard young Paul remind an ironed-haired newswoman who was straining against the tape she and Paul had hung up earlier. Ignoring Paul’s request, the reporter held out a fuzzy microphone stamped with “Channel 9,” and used her arms to secure her front-row spot among the throng of other reporters jostling for position.

“What can you tell us about the murders?” the woman pressed. “How was the couple killed? Do you have a suspect in custody?” The lights from the TV camera illuminated Paul, and for a second Anna wondered if he was going to say something he shouldn’t.

But, after his costly mistake, Paul wasn’t taking any chances. He held up a hand and said, “The Chief will make a statement soon.”

Anna wasn’t surprised so many press people were here. A double murder in a fancy New York City suburb on Christmas night was certainly sensational enough to earn air time on the national news. Bad stuff like that wasn’t supposed to happen in nice places like this.

She scanned the faces in the crowd, well aware that murderers were known to return to the scene of the crime to witness the police activity, to be part of the action they’d created—and gloat. Working on the theory that this was a planned murder, the Chief had ordered her to snap cell phone photos of anyone in the crowd who appeared in the least bit suspicious. So far she’d taken nine pictures. She had to admit that none of the subjects had sounded the warning bells in her head—most of them appearing too well-dressed to be stone-cold killers—but she also knew appearances could be deceiving.

In the middle of the street, a county officer directed approaching vehicles with an impatient wave of his hand. His goal was to keep the cars moving, but every passerby, it seemed, wanted a look. He was getting frustrated, and Anna felt for him. Behind him, lights blazed in the homes on the opposite side of the street, and rubberneckers gathered on the front stoops.

Anna shivered. It was so cold that her breath was visible in front of her, and she cupped her ungloved hands in front of her mouth to catch some of the warmth it generated. She stomped in place to keep the circulation going in her toes. She could hardly feel them anymore. She could have kicked herself for not keeping some extra layers in the trunk, especially a hat. She would never have let her son Max leave the house without one, so why had she? Wishing she had taken her own advice, she pressed her police cap—basically a flimsy piece of cardboard covered in fabric—onto her head.

But the cold could not dampen Anna’s excitement. As the first officer on the scene she would be at the center of the investigation. A dream she’d buried when she’d moved to the suburbs—to become a homicide investigator—had suddenly been resurrected.

She glanced at her watch. It was 9:30. So much had happened in a few hours. After they’d pried Web and Beth Marino from their sister’s body, Frank had taken the pair down to the station for questioning. Anna and Paul had waited for the ambulances, and she’d used the time to jot down her observations about the scene in her notebook. The paramedics had pronounced the bodies then everyone had cleared the house until the scene could be processed.

Anna saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a man in his fifties approach the tape and flash a badge at Paul. He moved slowly, but he had an unmistakable air of command. No doubt he was the case detective.

She heard him say to Paul, “Officer Valentine?”

A newswoman called out from behind the tape, “Detective, what can you tell us about the murders? Detective, can you help us out here?”

The man ignored her.

Paul’s eyes searched Anna out, and he pointed her out to the detective. “Over there.”

The detective headed in her direction. A man of medium height and neutral coloring, he was wearing an olive green trench coat that hung open at the front, as if he was oblivious to the cold. He was slight but strong. Anna could tell that just by the way he moved: slowly, deliberately, and with a quiet confidence. He seemed so comfortable in his body it made her catch her breath.

When the detective reached her, brown eyes held her gaze. She couldn’t decide if he was handsome or not.
Pleasant looking
was the only description that came to mind.

“I’m Jerry Kreeger,” he said in a voice that was even mellower than she expected. It was like a fresh piece of bread dipped in good olive oil.

She stuck out her hand, suddenly shy. “Anna Valentine.”

“Nice to meet you.” He pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

Anna reached into her pocket for her notes. But instead of grabbing her notebook, she accidentally pulled out the disposable drugstore camera she’d retrieved from her squad car earlier. It was against regs to take pictures of a crime scene, but she’d wanted to capture it fresh so she could have another look at it later.

Shit.

The detective’s eyes turned hard. He looked like a tiger ready to pounce. “What’s that?”

“A camera,” she said stupidly.

“You used it inside?”

“Yeah.” She felt her face flush. After Paul’s screw-up in the kitchen, this guy must think they were Keystone Kops.

“Great,” he snapped.

She was about to lie and insist she’d done it after the evidence collection team got there but quickly thought better of it. If he asked around, no one would back her up. “I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she said, feeling resentment rise within her.

“Did you touch anything?”

I’m not an idiot,
she thought indignantly, but said, “I was careful.” Feeling a flash of defiance as she snatched the camera back, she added, “I’ve worked scenes like this before.”

The detective opened his mouth to respond, but Avondale’s police chief walked over at exactly that moment. She slipped the camera back in her pocket and pulled out her notebook, hoping the detective wouldn’t rat her out to her boss.

“I see you two have met,” said Chief March.

“Yeah, we’re old friends,” muttered the detective.

The Chief looked at Kreeger, then back at Anna, but decided to ignore the comment. “Jerry, I’m going to give that statement to the press now,” he said, turning his head toward the crowd on the street. “Do you want to say anything to them?”

“No, I’d rather you just handled it. I need to get inside.”

“Okay. Afterward, I’m heading back to the station house. You need me, call the cell.”

“Thanks, Andy,” said Kreeger.

The Chief walked away, and Kreeger turned back to Anna. She expected a reprimand, but Kreeger remained silent. He stared at her again, his face impassive. He waited a few seconds and said, “Okay, let’s start with the 9-1-1 call.”

Anna quietly released her breath. “At 6:04 p.m. we received the call about a possible residential burglary,” she said. “We arrived at 6:07 to find the sister and brother of the female victim on the driveway…”

“What was your impression of them?” Kreeger interrupted.

Anna looked up. “They were upset, afraid.” She opened her mouth to continue, but he cut her off again.

“Do you think one of them could have committed the murders before you got there?” As in, had they killed the couple, driven away then doubled back to make it look like they’d just arrived.

Anna had already considered this idea and rejected it. “I don’t think so,” she told the detective, her confidence returning. “They looked genuinely upset. It would have been hard to fake that.” Then she told him about their shoes and the man’s prosthetic leg.

Kreeger was looking at her thoughtfully now, a lock of his fine brown hair forming a C-curve on his brow. Anna fought a sudden urge to push it back into place.

He was nodding now, a slight smile on his face. “All right, go on.”

She led him up the driveway and around to the back of the house, pointing to the door where she’d first noticed that something was wrong. The doorknob was now gone, courtesy of the evidence team.

Pete Moon, a pudgy Avondale police officer who worked the weekend shift and had been called in for emergency duty, was standing guard at the official entry and exit point for the investigators. He was red-faced and sweaty in spite of the cold, but his excited smile belied any discomfort he might have been feeling. It was his job to record names and badge numbers and the time at which officials came and went.

“Hey, Anna!” said Pete a little too enthusiastically.

“Hi, Pete,” she responded casually.

“The M.E. here yet?” Kreeger asked Pete.

“Yeah, he’s upstairs now.” Looking at his clipboard, Pete added, “With Detective De Luca.” Anna guessed he must be the detective’s second-in-command.

“Okay, thanks.”

Kreeger bent down to retrieve a pair of gloves and booties from a set of boxes someone had left on the stoop. Anna followed suit and slipped the garments. Kreeger sat down on the stoop to put on his booties while Anna took in the scene in the backyard. It was crawling with detectives from the county Crime Scene Unit and was lit up like a state fair, thanks to the powerful reflector lights the Avondale Fire Department had brought in. The investigators were combing the area for footprints, cigarette butts or any other evidence the killer might have left.

Kreeger rose. “Let’s go inside.”

Anna followed him into the house and saw that the white kitchen surfaces were now covered in black fingerprint dust. Numbered tented tags marked spots in the room that had been photographed, including the blood-spattered island and the floor where the broken chair had lain. The body was still on the floor, but not where she’d found it. It was now in the middle of the room where the brother had dragged it and covered in a sheet stamped with “Bergen County Medical Examiner.”

Three C.S.U. detectives were going quietly about their work, but now they paused to greet Kreeger.

Anna was stuck by the stark contrast to the homicide scenes she’d attended in New York, where officers cracked crude jokes about the bodies and took every opportunity to humiliate rookies who hadn’t yet built up a tolerance for the grisly business of death. She remembered one scene where a couple of veteran officers pretended to need help moving a bloated corpse they’d pulled from the Hudson River, and they asked a kid right out of the Academy to step up to the plate. When the rookie finally screwed up his courage and grabbed the stiff’s arm, it came right off the body. The kid turned and retched—still holding the arm—while the other cops looked on and laughed.

“Where’s the phone?” said Kreeger, his eyes raking over the floor.

The phone? Anna remembered the brother telling her the victim had called him.

“Gene, did somebody find a phone?” Kreeger asked again to a man wearing wire-rimmed glasses.

“Nope.”

“So the perp took it,” said Kreeger, thinking aloud. He turned to Gene. “Is Jane here yet?”

The man shook his head, his eyes darting from Kreeger to Anna then back to Kreeger. Anna had noticed that he’d been checking her out ever since they came in. He was trying to be surreptitious about it, but it wasn’t working. Gene looked at her again, and she turned away to avoid meeting his eyes. There was something odd about him. He looked a little too much like a bug.

“I haven’t seen her,” the man told Kreeger.

Kreeger whipped out a cell phone and punched a number with his thumb. “Jane, it’s Jerry,” he said into the silver device. “I need you to ping Serena Vance’s phone…”

Anna recognized the name of one of the county prosecutors, and she understood what the detective was asking for. The service provider could pinpoint the cell’s exact location by triangulating the signal coming out of it. The signal might lead the cops directly to the perp.

Kreeger snapped the phone shut and slipped it into his pocket. “So, why’d he take the phone?” he said to no one in particular.

“Maybe he was worried about fingerprints,” Anna offered hesitantly.

He didn’t look at her. He was scanning the floor. “Could be. If he checked to see if the victim called 9-1-1, he wouldn’t have had time to wipe everything down. He’d have wanted to get out of there fast.”

“And yet he was careful enough to remove most of the bullet casings from both scenes,” Anna replied. “If he was smart enough to remove evidence, wouldn’t he have worn gloves, too?”

Finally Kreeger looked up and focused his intense gaze at her. “You’d think so. But maybe a glove slipped off?” He paused and cocked an eyebrow. “Or maybe he took the phone so he could dial out for pizza?”

Anna knew the detective was joking, but really the idea wasn’t so farfetched. She recalled a murder scene where a guy had killed his friend and then fixed himself a bologna sandwich in the dead man’s kitchen. Investigators had pulled DNA from saliva left on the uneaten crusts and the guy landed a life sentence in Sing-Sing.