Justification for Murder (15 page)

I
t was almost eight thirty, and Sorensen’s eyes were beginning to glaze over. He shut down the computer and annotated the detective’s name in charge of the case in Fremont before he got up from the chair. He looked around. Virago’s light was still on in her office. Jon was also staring at his monitor. Sorensen wondered if he was doing work or posting shit on Facebook.

“Go home. Don’t you have a girl to take on a date or something?” Sorensen said over the empty tables.

Jon took a second to realize the comment was directed at him. “Huh? No, I have no plans.”

“What are you working on?”

“I’ve been doing all kinds of searches on ViCAP. I started with the chemical composition of the gloves to see if there were more cases, and I found a few, but they didn’t seem related, like a burglary in Tampa and a motorcycle gang fight in North Dakota.”

“Okay,” Sorensen said, coming closer to Jon’s desk.

“Then I started looking for cases with tampered brake lines, I even looked for different things related to the suicides. But I haven’t found anything that stands out.”

“Well, call me if you do. Go home soon, though.” He patted the intern’s shoulder and headed home.

In the car, he put on his Bluetooth headset and grabbed the Post-It note where he had jotted the Fremont detective’s number. He dialed when he stopped at a red light.

“Detective McArthur,” a tired voice said, almost muffled by loud sports announcers in the background.

Sorensen introduced himself and gave the detective the necessary context for the call. Then he asked, “Was your case regarding Miss Juliette Davis ruled a suicide by the ME?”

“Yes. That’s why we stopped investigating. Though I gotta tell you, I’ve seldom seen anything more gruesome.”

“Do you know if the victim had breast cancer?”

“What?” McArthur paused. “Give me a sec. Let me go outside.” After a few seconds, Sorensen heard a door open and then the music stopped. “Ah, much better. This place is noisy, or maybe in my old days I just can’t hear so well.”

“Do you know if the victim had breast cancer?” Sorensen asked again.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, she did.”

“Do you know who was her doctor?”

“I’ll have to check my notes. But you’ll have to wait until Monday. I’ll have to find the file.”

“I need you to tell me today. I have three victims who have died the same way and at least one of them had breast cancer.”

“Shit happens, man. I don’t know what knowing her doctor tonight is going to do to solve your case. Besides, you don’t have a case. They’re suicides. Case closed.”

Sorensen gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles started hurting. He let go a little and took a very deep breath. He could find this information on his own, but it would take more legwork than if this asshole gave it to him.

“Could you email or fax me your case notes? This way, you can go back to the bar and I don’t have to wait for Monday.”

“Asshole,” McArthur said before he hung up.

Sorensen cursed and dialed Virago, who was still in the office. Just before he got home, he saw an email notification pop up in his phone. Somebody in the Fremont Police Department had understood the value of collaboration and scanned the file for him.

He opened his front door, and Melissa came to greet him. She hugged him for a long time and buried her face in his large neck.

“What’s going on?”

“I love you,” she said without moving.

Now he was sure there was something he was going to regret coming home to. “What happened?”

“Why can’t you accept that sometimes I just hug you and kiss you because you are the greatest man in the world and I’m happy to see you home safe and sound?” she said, pulling away from him but now holding both of his hands. “And to show you how much I love you, I made meatloaf.”

“Oh, crap. How long is your mother staying this time?”

“You’re going to love this meatloaf. She comes on Sunday. Only three weeks.”

“Woman! Why do you do this to me?”

After Sorensen had his well-deserved double serving of meatloaf with extra mashed potatoes, he kissed his wife and checked on the kids. He then went to his small office, turned the computer on and started reading the file from the Fremont suicide. All the details of the case were pretty much a carbon copy of any in his three files. McArthur didn’t have a lot of notes, so it didn’t take him long to find the name of the doctor: Leavenworth. The same doctor his second victim had.

“I
have to go back to the office,” Sorensen said to his wife as he put his jacket on.

“At this hour?” she said, pausing the TiVo. An image of Charlie Sheen from
Two and a Half Men
was frozen on the TV.

“Yeah, I didn’t take my notes and I have to check on a few things.”

He kissed his wife softly on the lips and headed for the door. “Don’t wait up.”

Driving in California was mostly a pain in the ass. There were always cars, even outside of rush hour. However, the night was fairly light, and he made it back in half the time it usually took him.

“Captain,” Sorensen said when he arrived.

Virago was immersed in paperwork and her eyes were crossed. “I swear to God I’d have never signed up for this job if I knew half my existence would be spent on budgets.”

“Yeah, fun. Listen, I think I have a lead on my suicides.”

She leaned back on her chair, welcoming the distraction and focused her attention on him. “Do tell.”

He explained the doctor connection between his second victim and the case in Fremont. “By the way, thanks for getting me the file.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, waving her hand back and forth. “I hate it when people don’t do their jobs.” She crossed her arms. “What’s next?”

“That’s why I’m here. I’m going to check if the other victims share the same doctor. If they do, I guess I’ll be paying her a visit first thing in the morning.”

“Sounds good.”

“I need your help with something.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I want Lynch back.”

She started shaking her head to protest.

“Listen, there’s something going on here. I think we have something much bigger with the multiple suicides than we could’ve ever imagined.” He got up, but before leaving he added, “Besides, it would help if he called Seattle.”

“What do you need, a formal introduction?”

“No, but I’m sure he can get more from his old buddies than I can.”

“Okay, you ask him about making the call, and I’ll try to figure out a way to convince him to come back, but I’m not making any promises.”

Back at his desk Sorensen dialed Lynch. He didn’t pick up, so he left a voice mail. “Lynch, I need a favor. There was a suicide in Seattle, carbon copy of my three here. Can you reach out to…” He paused to look back at the detective’s name. “Detective James Danielson and find out if the victim ever lived in California and if so, if she was a patient of Dr. Leavenworth?”

He hung up and added the two new victims to his board, then wrote “Dr. Leavenworth” in the center, circled it and drew an arrow from Juliette Davis, the victim in Fremont, to the circle, and another one from his second victim, Taisha Robinson.

Sorensen checked the time. It was past nine thirty. “Not too late,” he said under his breath and decided to make some calls to find out who else was connected to this doctor. In between, he left new messages for Lynch.

Finally, his phone vibrated on top of his desk.

“Stop stalking me,” Darcy said.

“Have you called your buddy?”

“No. You do it.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“To tell you to stop bothering me. I quit. I’m not your friend. I don’t owe you or the department anything, so leave me the fuck alone.”

“Wait,” Sorensen said before Darcy hung up. “I don’t give a shit if you don’t care about anything at all, but there are at least five women dead, and four of them were seeing the same doctor. I can call your friend and get the answer, or you can be a fucking cop and help me find out who’s killing these women.”

Darcy didn’t say anything but he also didn’t hang up. Then Sorensen heard him sigh and mutter something about his mother under his breath.

“I know Danielson. I’ll give him a call now. Then you leave me alone.”

“Fine.”

Sorensen drew new arrows from his victims to Dr. Leavenworth’s circled name. There was no way that was a coincidence. He was about to shut down his computer and head back home when he got a hunch. He sat back down and looked at his notes to make a final call.

“Mr. Hughes, sorry for calling so late. This is Detective Sorensen.”

“Did you find who killed my wife?”

The hope in his voice almost made him choke.

“No. I’m sorry, we’re still working on it. I wanted to check something with you.”

After a long silence, Bob said, “Yes, of course. Anything.”

“Do you know the name of the doctor who was treating your wife’s cancer?”

“My wife didn’t have cancer.”

Sorensen cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear while he browsed through the ME’s report.

“I’m sorry, but the ME found that she had stage two cancer.”

“That’s not possible. She had a lump that was checked, they did a biopsy, and they said it was benign. You can check with her doctor if you want to.”

“Okay, can you give me the doctor’s name?”

“Dr. Leavenworth.”

D
arcy grabbed another beer from the fridge and sat on the large chocolate leather sofa, putting his feet up on the coffee table. The living room was spacious, but he felt suffocated by it. He got up and opened the deck door but left the screen closed. Before reaching out to Detective Danielson in Seattle, he tried calling Saffron one more time. He’d left three messages already. When the call went to voice mail he hung up, just as he had done the last few times he’d called. At least he knew she was home, and the security detail had a visual on her.

He took a deep breath and made the call Sorensen wanted.

“Coming back from the dead?” Danielson asked.

“Pretty much.”

“How’re you liking warm and overpriced California?”

“Depends on the day.”

Darcy asked about Danielson’s family and caught up on his old colleagues at the Seattle PD. New people on board, some common friends retired, a few new babies, and no deaths on active duty. It seemed that life went on for everybody but Darcy Lynch, he thought, feeling sorry for himself. He brushed his hair with his hand and shook the feeling. He didn’t need to make himself feel worse than he already did.

“But anyway, I’m sure you didn’t call to find out if Richard Lee has finally reached three hundred pounds, which by the way he hasn’t. He actually hooked up with this health nut and lost a bunch of weight. You wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him.”

“No fucking way. I was so sure I would win that bet.”

“You and half the department.”

“True.” Darcy said almost laughing. Then he went right to the meat of the call: “You have a suspicious death case about a woman, who carved her breast out and bled to death, right?”

“Yeah, Sonia McCarthy. Terrible thing. Was ruled a suicide, though, so we closed it.”

“We have four similar cases here. Can you email me your case notes?”

“You have four? What the hell? Yeah, sure thing. I’ll open the case again too. Do you have anything on it?”

“No, not much. Same type of deal with all four.”

“All suicides?” Danielson asked.

“Yes. You won’t happen to remember if the victim had breast cancer, do you?”

“Yeah, she did. Everybody thought she killed herself to avoid the agony.”

“Same story here. All our victims had cancer.”

They both felt silent for a moment. Danielson finally said, “Man, it must be the air in California.”

“What do you mean?”

“My vic moved from California three weeks before she killed herself.”

“Bay Area?”

“I think so. I’ll have to double-check, though.”

“Do you remember her doctor’s name?”

After a short pause, Danielson said, “No. It was something long. It reminded me of one of those air freshener scents—you know, like lavender.”

“Leavenworth?” Darcy asked, his voice excited for the first time that evening.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Shit, I think we have something.”

“I’ll send you everything I have, but keep me posted. It would be nice to close this one the right way. Nobody deserves to go like that.”

Darcy called Sorensen back and told him everything he had found out. Then Sorensen shared the latest news. “Hughes went to the same doctor.”

Darcy fell silent, his head working fast trying to make any connection that made sense. He failed.

“But isn’t Hughes related to Saffron’s case?” he asked.

“At this point, man. I brought your whiteboard next to mine so they can cozy up.”

After a few seconds, Darcy said, “I want to go with you to visit the famous doctor tomorrow.”

“I thought you quit,” Sorensen said, but his voice was good humored.

“I can quit again tomorrow night. Who has my cases?”

“You do. Virago hasn’t given them to anybody. She knew you’d be back.”

“That’s pretty arrogant. I’m not coming back. I just want to return the favor to Danielson. His case’s still open in Seattle.”

“Sure. Bright and early at the station. I want to be this bitch’s first appointment.”

“I’ll meet you outside at eight.”

“Suit yourself.”

As soon as he hung up he called Saffron again.

“Saffron, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I have a very important question for you about the case. Please call me back and let me know if you see a Dr. Leavenworth.” He wanted to say something more, but he would be repeating himself, so after a pause he added, “This is really important. Please call me as soon as you get this message.”

He got another beer from the fridge and walked out to his patio. There were several lounge chairs surrounding the pool. He sat on one. It was really dark and a bit chilly. Darcy took a long sip of his drink and looked up, seeing more stars than he’d seen since he moved to California.

His phone vibrated with a message. He opened it and saw a text from Saffron: “Yes, she’s my doctor.”

A chill ran through his body.