They started after her. As they crossed the street, Marcus called in to Lincoln, asked him to execute a warrant for Antonio Giormanni ASAP, and to get him picked up. Lincoln put the pieces together immediately, cursed and promised to handle things on his end. Baldwin signaled he wanted to talk to Lincoln. After a few moments, he hung up, and they caught up with Taylor.
“You ready to do this?” Baldwin asked her.
“You know it. Let's take this fucker down.” She un-holstered her weapon and went to the door. Banged on it like she'd done at Anderson's other house. “Police! Open the door.”
Open sesame, she thought. The door was opened immediately and a familiar face stood in the doorway.
Michelle Harris looked completely and utterly shocked. Her face went white, and she moved on instinct, away from the brandished weapon Taylor had in her right hand, pointed right at her. She turned to flee. Taylor took three steps after her and got a handful of her hair, yanked her to a stop.
“Ow!” Michelle screamed.
“Shut up!” Taylor screamed right back at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
B
aldwin was through the door now, Marcus too. Taylor looked at both of them, released Michelle's hair.
“Where is Henry Anderson?”
“He's upstairs, taking a shower. What in the world are you doing here? And why are you looking for Henry?” Though she sounded genuinely shocked, Taylor wasn't falling for it. She knew that Michelle Harris wasn't here by accident.
“I'll get him,” Marcus said, charging up the oak staircase. Baldwin followed right on his heels.
Taylor steered Michelle by the arm, settled her roughly on a cinnamon-colored leather couch in what could best be described as a den. Dark wood, bookshelves lining the wallsâthere was a fleeting impression of beauty, but the irony of the situation was too strong. She blocked everything out but Michelle's horror-stricken face.
“Why are you here? What is your connection to Anderson?” she peppered.
“Duh. He's my boyfriend. We've been dating for over a year. What's it to you? Why are
you
here? What do you want from Henry? He hasn't done anything wrong, has he?”
Taylor stayed standing, looming over Michelle. “You are dating Henry Anderson. You're kidding me, right?” Baldwin had sidled up beside her.
“Marcus has Anderson cuffed and in custody, has him Mirandized with me as a witness. Patrols are on their way to execute the search warrant. He's lawyered up.”
“You arrested Henry? For what?”
“Oh, let's see, Baldwin, what all do we have him on? Child pornography, for starters. Libel, slander, breaking parole, falsifying information about his whereabouts to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, falsifying his information on the sexual offenders database. That's just for starters, I'm sure the D.A.'s office will have an indictment the length of my arm when they get done with him. Federal
and
state charges. Your Henry is going away for a long time. Oh, and there's that other pesky little thing. Your sister's murder.”
Michelle shook her head, swatting her hand in front of her face like she was shooing away a bee. “Wait, wait, wait. Todd killed Corinne. You arrested him. All the evidence pointed right at him. They are working on a trial date, for God's sake. Henry has never met my sister in his life. There's no way he could be involved. And what are you talking about, the sexual offenders' database? Henry isn't a sex offender. I live here, you think I could miss it if he had a problem?”
“You're so sure about that, Michelle?”
Taylor heard the boots of the additional patrol officers arriving. The house was quickly teeming with officers. Henry Anderson was already stashed in the back of a patrol car, awaiting a ride down to the CJC. Taylor hadn't even seen him brought out of his house. She stowed the disappointment, there was plenty of time to deal with him.
Michelle met Taylor's gaze without flinching. “Yes, I am sure. I'd like to see Henry now,” she answered. She might as well have been sucking on ice cubes, the words were so cold.
Jesus. The woman didn't have a clue. How was that possible? Her lover was a full-time video pimp, running a massive, diverse organization of smut, and she didn't know? Taylor found that extremely hard to believe.
“Why don't you come downtown with us, Michelle. You can tell me more about Henry.”
Taylor reached for Michelle's arm. It was one step too far. Michelle snatched her arm away and turned on Taylor so swiftly that three weapons were drawn.
“You know, I trusted you. That first day, in Mrs. Manchini's living room, when you'd just come from Corinne's house. All I saw was a kind woman, a woman I could trust to bring justice for Corinne. Now look at you. Tilting at windmills, discredited, demeaned. You're the laughingstock of Nashville, you know that? Can't even keep your own playthings off the air. Not to mention solve a predictable murder. Henry told me what you did to him. I hate you, youâ¦youâ¦SLUT!”
Michelle stormed out of the room, leaving Taylor stunned.
She'd only focused on one line in Michelle's tirade.
The laughingstock of Nashville?
Could that be true?
Stop it, girl. Look at the source. Michelle was obviously disturbed. First her sister is murdered, then she finds out her boyfriend is a liar. If anything, she was the sad case here. She's having an awfully tough week. Just wait until she finds out her beloved boyfriend was banging her dead sister. Might make me a little testy, too.
Taylor swallowed hard, then followed Michelle out the front door of Anderson's home. One way or another, it was time for some answers.
T
aylor was in Interrogation two, Henry Anderson across from her. He'd aged since she last saw him. The close-cropped hair was prematurely white, his skin tanned but starting to go crepey around his eyes and mouth, his teeth flashing under a still black goatee.
He still had those icy green eyes too, the ones that made her so uncomfortable all those years ago when she was putting the cuffs around his wrists the very first time. The eyes that distracted her just long enough for him to try to escape. Back then, she didn't know the difference between lust and hate. She wasn't intimately familiar with the seductiveness of evil. Now she was. And there was no question which emotion Anderson was feeling right now.
Hate was probably too gentle a word. Absolute and complete abhorrence, that was a better description of the daggers he was shooting at her.
“You know, bitch, I'm gonna be out on bail before you finish sucking your boyfriend's dick tonight.”
“Henry, shut up.” Miles Rose was seated next to Anderson, looking decidedly less jovial than when he was last in the room with Todd Wolff.
Taylor's opinion of Rose had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees. Rose was on the direct retainer of The September Group, Henry Anderson's umbrella company that housed his illicit video empire. Selectnet was just one of the companies he operated, staying anonymous through multiple layers of business bullshit.
It was a damn shame Henry Anderson was such a lowlife criminal. If he were straight, he could be president.
“You still like your pussy licked, Lieutenant? I always liked watching those boys go down on you. Hard to come that way for you though, isn't it? Givin' up too much control, I expect. 'Cept for with that new boy. He's quite the
artiste,
if you know what I mean. That why you're marryin' him? He makes you cream?”
Rose had the decency to blush. “That is enough, Henry.”
“No, Miles, it's fine. This is the only way Henry can get off.” Taylor met the frosty eyes. “Isn't it, Henry? I should have known you'd be a watcher. Still having those impotency issues? Hit or miss, huh? Poor thing. Though I guess that works out well for Michelle Harris, doesn't it? She's not that into men anyway. Since you aren't much of a threat in the bedroom, that must be a sweet setup for you. You have a pretty woman to give you legitimacy, and you don't have to get it up for her. Did she ask you why?”
“Lieutenant, I think that's enough from you, too.” Miles tapped his hand on the table, palm down. The slap echoed, but it didn't work. Taylor's and Henry's eyes were locked, pure venom shooting from his, something akin to gloating streaming back from hers.
Taylor held Henry's gaze for a heartbeat longer, then smiled. “Hope it doesn't hurt too bad, Henry. Do you have that phantom limb pain when you can't get it up? Tch. Sorry about that. I might have gotten a bit carried away way back when. Maybe I shouldn't have kicked you in the balls when you tried to run. But I see you've found new and different ways to inflict pain. Apparently you didn't need to use your prick to screw people. Too bad you blew it again.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I don't know what you're talking about. I am golden.”
“You're shit. We have everything. The whole setup. Every company, all the records. All the videos, all the studios. Todd Wolff gave you up. And you just admitted, on tape, mind you, that you've seen the videos.”
Anderson leaned back in his chair. If he wasn't cuffed to the table, he would have crossed his arms in nonchalance. “Pppft. Little pussy knows nothing. Though I will miss that little wife of his. She was quite a piece of ass. Had her every which way from Sunday, and then some.”
“Too bad your son died with her.”
“I have no earthly idea what you're talking about, Lieutenant. I'm impotent, remember?”
“Intermittently. You forget, I was there at the hospital after you took my boot in the crotch. The doctors specifically said that you'd have trouble getting it up and keeping it up, but that time would heal the wound. Since you'd been fucking Corinne Wolff, I assume the old adage is true.”
There was finally a small degree of wariness in Anderson's eyes.
“You're saying that kid was mine?”
“DNA doesn't lie, Henry. Yes, the baby was your son. Shouldn't have killed her. You robbed yourself of a chance for an heir.”
“I didn't kill her. The boy was mine?” Anderson had gotten still. My God, Taylor thought, he actually had feelings for Corinne.
“Tell me how it worked, Henry. How you slept with one sister and lived with the other. I don't understand.”
“Henry,” Miles warned.
“This doesn't matter, Miles. I refuse to let them try to pin Corinne's murder on me.” He turned back to Taylor. “Yes, I lived with Michelle. She knows nothing about any of this. Corinne and I kept things quiet. Very quiet. I loved her.”
“I didn't know that was an emotion you could feel, Henry.”
“Fuck you, cop. You don't know anything about me.” He turned his head away and Taylor could have sworn she'd seen a tear. But Henry was done talking. When she realized he wasn't going to be any more forthcoming, she turned off the tape recorder.
“You're right, Henry. Todd doesn't have all the details. But he had nothing to lose, testifying against you costs him nothing. He'll probably get special consideration for Corinne's murder, come to think of it. Since he's been so helpful and all. No, it wasn't all Todd.”
“What are you talking about, bitch?”
This time, when she smiled, she stood up. “What, you think I'm going to lay out the whole case against you? You can worry about that all the way to court. And you'll be quite the star in prison this time, Henry. I heard they called you Henrietta last time.”
She ignored him when he lunged at her, knew the shackles attached to the table would hold. Turning her back on Henry Anderson felt good. Ever since she'd gotten a little overzealous with him all those years ago, had to stomp on his private parts, she'd harbored a slight sense of guilt for hurting him so badly. That emotion was gone.
“Bye, Henry.”
When the door shut behind her, she let out the breath she wasn't aware she was holding. She went two doors down the hall.
“Did we get enough?” she asked the rest of her team, who'd crowded into the observation/printer room to watch the interrogation.
Baldwin was the one who answered. “Yep. Like you said, he openly admitted to seeing your tapes. The voice prints should be perfect, you captured a range of emotions. This will seal the deal with the videotape of you and David Martin, the voice on the tape can be digitally matched to the spliced voice and we've got yet another charge to hang on him, and another example of how your good name was falsely besmirched.”
“Besmirched. I like that word.”
They shared a smile, then Lincoln cleared his throat. “Oh for God's sake, you two need to get a room.”
Laughter rang out, which helped. Taylor felt dirty after her meeting with Anderson. He'd always known just the right things to say to get under her skin. It was the reason she'd lost her temper with him all those years ago, kicked him in the nuts so hard that they ascended and had to be surgically fixed. The odds of him fathering a child were exceptionally slim, and Taylor caught herself before she felt bad about his loss of a son. Her grief was reserved for the baby, a child that never had a chance to live because his parents were idiots.
Antonio Giormanni was being indicted as they spoke, but was cutting a sweet deal with the D.A. to testify fully against Henry Anderson. Todd Wolff, still swearing up and down that he didn't kill his wife, was also getting some consideration in exchange for his testimony. It was going to be a long, convoluted trial, but Taylor had every confidence that the state would throw Henry away for life this time.
As everyone made plans to get drinks at Mulligan's Pub, down on 2nd Avenue, she wished she had that last little bit of the puzzle. Direct causal verification of Corinne's murderer. They'd get it sooner or later, but she'd prefer it sooner.
Everyone split up to do the last-minute items that needed to be addressed before they could call this a day. A successfully solved case, on several different levels. She straightened all the papers in her office. She answered a couple of e-mails. She placed the last items in the murder book, Corinne Wolff's autopsy photos juxtaposed with a photo of her and Todd on their wedding day, lifted from the front table in their foyer. The woodsy background looked especially green tonight, Corinne a luminous wood sprite in white. What an incredible waste.
And that precious little girl, Hayden. A thought hit her. Hayden's blond hair, so different from her parents' dark. What if Anderson had fathered Hayden as well? It was a long shot, but Taylor wrote the idea on a Post-it note and stuck it to the inside of the murder book. It didn't really matter if Anderson was Hayden's father, but it might help with the timeline. There were plenty of details to be ironed out, the case still needed to be properly prepared before going to trial. There were no guarantees in today's judicial system. She heaved a sigh.
A soft knocking made her look up. Baldwin stood in the door, Lincoln behind him.
“Come on in,” she said. “I'm ready, I was just putting a couple of notes in the files so I don't forget. I could use a Guinness, I'll tell you that.”
“We might have to hold off on that a moment.” Lincoln had that look, that “I found something you've got to see” look that he only got when he had something explosive to tell her.
Her stomach dropped. She took her hair out of the ponytail, then put it back up. “God, don't tell me. More tapes?”
“No. Nothing bad for you.” He smiled and sat in the chair opposite her. Baldwin stayed standing in the doorway.
“Spill. I'm out of patience today, Linc.”
“Michelle Harris has a juvenile record. A sealed juvenile record.”
Taylor's heart thumped twice, resetting its rhythm for a faster pace.
“For what? Did you get them unsealed?”
“I did, but Baldwin had to help. It was a federal case.”
“Michelle Harris was charged with a federal felony when she was a kid?”
“Not exactly. She was raped. When she was fourteen. By a really bad guy who was a serial rapist, preyed on young women in Connecticut. That's why it was so hard to get, the records are tied up in a completely separate state's jurisdiction as well as with the FBI. Because this guy transported some of his victims across state lines, the FBI was able to level kidnapping charges against him. But he slipped the net. Got off in court on a bogus technicality. I could go into details, but let's fast forward to why. He slips the noose and goes out to get himself some play.
“He found them at summer camp. Tennis camp. Michelle was fourteen. We don't have all the details, but on the night he raped her, Michelle managed to kill him.”
“What?”
“Yeah. It's a wild story. He raped her, left her, and instead of reporting it, she followed him. He went to a bar, she waited on him. He came out drunk, she took advantage of the situation. Lured him behind the bar, took care of business.”
“How?” Taylor asked.
“With a piece of steel pipe. She beat him to death.”