Poisonous: A Novel (23 page)

Turning around in a circle, Max surveyed the space.

Ivy had parked on the south side of the preserve and had died on the north side of the clearing. If she were running from an attacker, wouldn’t she have run
toward
her vehicle? It was nearly a mile down the trail, but still closer to residences than the northern trail.

But Max was presuming that Ivy was running
away
from someone. Maybe she had
met
someone here and it got out of hand. Maybe it really
was
an accident.

But why the cuts on her arms? There had been no signs of rape, but maybe an attempted rape?

Max heard a faint noise. She turned, surprised to see Grace Martin emerging from the trail. Max met her halfway across the clearing.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Max said.

“Unofficially,” Grace said.

“What happened today? First you tell me you can’t help, then you’re sending NCFI everything they need.”

Grace looked around and for a minute didn’t say anything. “Off the record,” she cautioned.

Max nodded. “Of course.”

“My chief is a cop’s cop. He spent twenty years as a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles County before taking this post two years ago when we consolidated. He supports the staff, is good with the public, and keeps the department within its budget. There is really only one thing he hates: threats.”

Max couldn’t imagine that anything she’d done or said would constitute a threat. Not that she
wouldn’t
use a threat if warranted, but this time she’d been playing nice. Or she’d thought. “I’m not following.”

“Paula Wallace called the chief and said if he allowed you to run with the segment on your show with his cooperation, she and her husband would sue the city and the department.”

Max was rarely at a loss for words. She knew she’d angered Paula Wallace, but had no idea how much.

“The chief told her that no one with CMPA was going on camera related to your story, but that you had every right to use public information as you see fit. I don’t know what Paula said after that—he wouldn’t say—but when he got off the phone, he told me to send NCFI anything they wanted. I’m still banned from speaking on camera, but the chief is going to let you put our media rep on if you wish. She’ll only give you the standard spiel, but it’s better than nothing.”

“I owe your chief a bottle of scotch.”

“He doesn’t drink. But if you had football tickets, he’s a die-hard Forty-niner fan and the tickets at the new stadium are hard to come by.”

Football—Max wasn’t a fan, but she’d bet her trust fund that one of her relatives had season tickets.

“For what it’s worth,” said Max, “Paula Wallace wouldn’t agree to the interview if I mentioned anything about Ivy’s social media bullying, the Brocks’ lawsuit, or the settlement.”

“Why didn’t you agree?”

“Because Ivy’s death wasn’t sexually motivated, it wasn’t a crime of passion. It was either an accident or a premeditated push off that cliff.” Max gestured to the north, where Ivy had fallen to her death. “That suggests that it was related to something personal, and the only thing Ivy had going in her life was her blog and Instagram feed. She wasn’t involved in athletics, she had good grades but wasn’t involved in any extracurricular clubs, no hobbies that she talked about online. Her entire life seemed to focus on spreading gossip, proving it with photos if possible.”

When they heard a small group making their way up the trail, the two women turned. Max immediately recognized Graham Jones, the retired deputy sheriff from Sacramento County who now ran NCFI. With him were Ruby Jones, his sister-in-law and one of the best crime scene analysts Max had ever met, and Donovan Hunt, the former Public Information Officer for the sheriff’s department. He only answered to the name Hunt.

Max made the introductions and stood to the side while Graham, Ruby, and Hunt did their thing. She didn’t like staying on the sidelines, but she’d worked with Graham often enough to know he’d walk if she irritated him.

Her phone vibrated with a message from David.

I’m tracking Lorenzo. Won’t make it to the crime scene.

Good. That meant David suspected the lowlife was up to something.

Just when Max was getting irritated that Charlie was late, her cameraman/editor/assistant producer emerged from the trail. Charlie was the best on the road, and could fill multiple roles as needed. Her driver Richard walked behind him, helping carry his equipment.

Charlie was tall and skinny with a smooth baby face and a thick head of hair that had gone completely gray by the time he was twenty. No one ever got his age right, but Max knew he was thirty-six.

“Before you yell at the poor guy,” Charlie said, “I needed his help. You didn’t tell me this place was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.”

“You’re late,” Max said. “Your plane landed at eleven oh nine this morning.”

“Ain’t you the stalker boss,” Charlie snapped. “I’ve been doing my job. What have you been doing, pissing off the locals?”

Grace watched the exchange, bemused. Max couldn’t expect her or anyone to understand her relationship with Charlie Morelli.

“You know me all too well,” Max said. “But you’re still late, and you didn’t text me. So get off your high horse and catch up with Graham and his people. Hunt will make the official statement for NCFI.”

As Charlie spoke, he was unpacking his equipment, checking film and batteries. “I’ve already been doing my job, Maxine. Took B-roll of the school, the Wallaces’ house—or is it the Lakes’ house?—the town, the bay, and the bridge.”

“Bridge?”

“Setting, baby, it’s all how we splice it.”

Charlie was right—set the stage for the segment with a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the bay, Sausalito, the town of Corte Madera. Bigger to smaller, bringing the dead to the viewer. That this was a crime that could happen anywhere to anyone, that they should care because murder didn’t just happen in big cities. It affected everyone. The cyberbullying spin was—in Max’s mind—the big selling point of the story, but she would minimize it for the show. Her audience skewed older, with women forty-five to sixty-four being the largest viewer group, so the Internet wasn’t going to be sexy enough for them. Murder in a small town? Might as well write a cozy mystery and rake in the bucks with that demographic.

Charlie knew this. He understood stats and demographics better than anyone, even Ben. Even though he could be annoying, Max liked working with him.

Max and Grace remained silent as Graham and his team methodically surveyed the crime scene. It didn’t matter that more than a year had passed—they weren’t expecting to find any evidence the original investigators missed. But Graham would match up his measurements and photos with the official forensic photos; he sent Ruby down the gulley to take measurements and photos of the rock Ivy had hit. He had a copy of the police report. Hunt was inputting the details into a specialized forensics computer program that another person from NCFI had developed to help analyze data and work through scenarios. They worked for more than an hour, then the three huddled together.

Max had waited long enough. She walked over to them.

Ruby stopped speaking as she approached. Max arched her eyebrow and said to Graham, “Is this a private conversation, or can the person who’s paying you listen?”

He smiled with half his mouth. “I expected you over here fifteen minutes ago. You really are learning patience.”

She wasn’t amused. “I missed lunch, Graham.”

Grace had followed her over and Graham turned to include the detective in their conversation.

“Detective, we input the data collected into a computer model, then added additional information that wasn’t available—the exact distance, for example, of the cliff to the base, of the cliff to the rock, the angles in question, and statistical probabilities of all falls that are known to be accidents and those that are known to be homicides. Meaning, using only solved cases over the last twenty years that we have in our database, we can extrapolate that there is an eighty-five percent chance that your victim was pushed off the cliff—that she didn’t slip, run off, or jump. Of course there’s still a possibility it was suicide, but truthfully, based on known suicides, it’s highly unlikely she would have fallen on her back that far from the edge.”

“So you’re simply confirming what we already know,” Grace said, sounding both irritated and disappointed.

“There is one inconsistency, however. We downloaded all weather data from this area before leaving NCFI. Based on the actual temperature at this elevation, the coroner’s report, the forensics report, and the fact that Ivy Lake’s body was found less than twenty-four hours after her death which makes TOD easier to determine, I am comfortable stating that she was killed between ten and twelve midnight the night of July third.”

Grace didn’t say anything, but Max wasn’t keeping quiet. “Ivy posted to social media at one ten in the morning on July fourth. That was in the notes I sent to you.”

“To be accurate,” Graham said, “Ivy’s
phone
was used to post to social media at one ten on July fourth. There is no evidence that Ivy herself uploaded that message, at least no evidence that was submitted to NCFI.”

“Your time frame isn’t much different than the coroner’s,” Grace said.

“Correct. The coroner gave you a range of eleven at night to two in the morning, which is a good hypothesis, but I’m telling you based on a computer analysis that factors in all the nuances of the weather including moisture and the actual state of rigor mortis, liver temp, and visual examination, that my estimate is more accurate. I’ve narrowed the window down.”

“A witness stated that Ivy’s car was not parked outside the fire gate at ten fifteen when he was walking his dog,” Grace said. “According to her brother, she left the house just before ten thirty the night of July third.”

“And according to her phone records,” Graham said, “the last message she sent via Instant Chat was at ten twenty, which is the approximate time she left the house according to your witness.” He looked at Ruby, then Hunt, and they exchanged a silent message. He then said, “I’ll leave Ruby here for the next day or two. She is a certified forensic pathologist with a master’s in both entymology and biology. She can work with your coroner or the state lab to confirm our findings. Hunt and I have to return to Sacramento.”

Max considered the time window. Austin had last seen Ivy just before 10:30
P.M.
The preserve was a ten-minute drive from Ivy’s house. Which meant she was killed after 10:30
P.M.
… but before midnight. It was a brisk ten-minute walk from her car to the clearing. “Can you narrow the window anymore?”

“It may surprise you, but time of death is not an exact science.”

Max just stared at him, then turned to Ruby.

Ruby didn’t speak at first. She looked at Graham for permission. He nodded once.

She said, “The computer states based on the information we input that the victim died at 11:03
P.M.
However, there is always a window. We don’t know what her exact body temperature was when she died, if it was elevated because of exertion or a fever. We don’t know—”

Max put up her hand. “I understand. We know she was alive at ten twenty and you’re stating she was absolutely dead by midnight.”

Ruby nodded.

“She didn’t go anywhere else,” Max said. “She came directly here from her house. We assumed she went elsewhere because of that one-ten tweet.”

They all thought on that for a minute. Grace turned to Max and asked, “How does this work? Are you going to reveal this new information tomorrow on your show?” She looked disturbed—and worried.

“We’ll talk about that,” Max said. “I’m not going to jeopardize your investigation, but this is key information. I’ve been working off the assumption that Ivy went someplace for the nearly three hours between leaving her house and sending the tweet, ending up here to meet someone or, perhaps, spy on someone—knowing that she liked to take photos of her peers behaving badly. But if she was already dead, someone else had her phone. Someone, perhaps, who has no alibi between ten thirty and midnight and sent that tweet in an attempt to cover his own ass.”

*   *   *

David’s phone vibrated in his pocket. It was nearly seven, and Lorenzo had shown up at his office at four thirty, then left again thirty minutes later. He ended up in a sketchy bar shortly thereafter where he met a man David didn’t know. He took a couple of pictures, then went back to the hotel to wait for Max who was still at the preserve with Graham and his team.

He saw it was Jess calling, one of the researchers for “Maximum Exposure.”

“It’s late in New York,” David said.

“I’m working from home,” Jess said. “I got something on Lance Lorenzo. Max said he had a sister, right?”

“Yes.”

“Her name is Laura. She’s three years younger than Lance, a junior at UCLA majoring in psychology and biology. That’s a standard double major for someone who wants to go into medicine, probably psychiatry. She’s a year younger than Justin Brock—and they went to his senior prom together. Justin came up for the weekend to take Laura to her senior prom the following year.”

“High school sweethearts?”

“It’s more than that—neither Justin nor Laura have much of a social media presence, which isn’t surprising considering Justin’s little sister was cyberbullied. So I dug around a bit and I think they’re engaged.”

“Think?”

“There hasn’t been an announcement in the newspaper or anything, but I spent hours going through every psych major at UCLA on Facebook and found Laura’s name and photo pop up a few times here and there—not tagged because she doesn’t have a profile. Stanford gets out for the summer three weeks before UCLA. Memorial Day weekend, there’s a photo of Laura and Justin on who I’m thinking is Laura’s best friend’s page. No names, but the caption is, ‘Prince Charming just made my BFF the happiest girl on earth.’ Laura was sporting a rock the size of Gibraltar.”

“Good work, Jess. Get some sleep.”

David hung up and let himself into Max’s suite. He wrote down the dates—if Laura Lorenzo was a college junior, four years ago she was a high school junior. Justin was four years older than his sister, which meant Laura was a senior when Ivy and Heather were freshmen. They’d all gone to the same school.