The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (15 page)

When Maddie asked Bronson about his relationship with Abigail Knight, he lost his cool.

“Hey. Let’s cut to the chase. You know I got priors and a restraining order has been issued keeping me away from my ex. What you don’t got is anything that connects me to Abby’s death.”

“Actually we do,” Maddie said. “We’re here because your DNA matches up with the physical evidence at the murder scene. So it may be time for us to Mirandize you, and then accessorize you with a pair of our fashionable cuffs. After that it’ll be picture time with the media. Those pictures should be a real turnoff for your in-home services.”

When Jed pulled out his handcuffs and put his hand on Bronson’s shoulder, the trainer shook him off.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on,” he repeated. “You know Abby and I were doing the pelvic polka the day she got killed. I already told Detective Smith here about all that. I volunteered my DNA. You don’t got much and what you got drips reasonable doubt.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Everybody’s a jailhouse lawyer.”

Bronson kept shaking his head. “I don’t kill women.”

“Oh?” she said, “just men?”

“That’s bull, Sergeant. You know what I meant.”

“Okay. Let’s quit dancing.” She motioned for Jed to back off. “What you say is true, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t kill her. Her husband had gone to San Diego. You could have returned later.”

“That didn’t happen. She abused her body with rich foods and lots of wine. I kept her looking hot. The sex was … like a tip. That woman loved to fuck. ‘Sides, I was in the ballpark that night watching the D’Backs get their butts kicked by the Dodgers. Me and a buddy double dated. You want their names to check it out?”

“Damn those Dodgers,” Jed said before pulling out his pad and taking down the names and numbers of Bronson’s friends he claimed he had been with that night.

“What time did you leave your buddy and the women?” Maddie asked.

“I left my friend and his date after the game and a late snack. I’d say that was around midnight.” He smiled a cocky smile that seemed to say, “Yan, yan, you ain’t gonna get my ass.”

“What about your date?” Jed inquired, in what would likely be their final shot across his bow.

“I left her about ten the next morning. We had breakfast in Peoria before she headed for her job. She works the lunch and dinner shift at some fancy restaurant on Eighty-Third Avenue up near Bell, on the northwest side, near the Padres/Mariners spring training park.”

While Jed finished his notes, Maddie opened her purse and threw Bronson the rope. After some grousing, he tied the knot.

Jed held up his notepad. “You know we’ll check this.”

Bronson nodded. “Have at it, pal. You got your job to do. Now, can I politely ask you two to get the hell outta my gym so I can do mine? And, yeah, I know. If I think of anything, I should call. I will. Believe me. That Beholder asshole took away one of my best customers in more ways than one. When you nail that bozo, I’ll drink a toast to you both.”

As Jed pulled open the door, Maddie heard Bronson mumble something that sounded like, “Fucking cops.”

***

On the way back to the station, Maddie shared some thoughts with Jed. “I figure Bronson and Walker as innocent. And, without knowing what it means, they both tied the knots differently than the killer.”

“If I was the Beholder, and I was as sharp as we’re figuring he is,” Jed said, “I’d tie the knot differently for you than what I do to tie up the victims.”

“More than likely you would. But that raises the question, what’ll it mean if the knots are tied differently, should we get another victim?”

“I get it,” Jed said. “We make the knot an issue and see if the Beholder changes how he ties ‘em up. If so, we take a closer look at the ones we’ve had tie knots.”

“With only two victims we can’t even be certain we’re hunting a serial killer. Somebody wanting to kill either Folami or Abby could have killed the other woman to throw us off.”

“Which one you figure for the throwaway?”

“Assuming that’s the case,” Maddie said, “and that’s a big, floppy assumption, Abigail Knight would be the real target. If Dr. Knight or some lunatic lackey of his killed his wife, they could’ve hired Folami as a hooker to do her first to foster the serial killer angle.”

“But what makes Abigail Knight the real target?” Jed asked. “Wouldn’t that theory work the same if we did a u-turn and drove it the other direction?”

“Abigail Knight’s from a prominent family. To kill her as a throwaway would raise the heat. The killer would’ve been working against his own interests. If Folami was the chosen target, he’d have murdered a second hooker to make them appear to be victims of warring pimps or whatever.”

“Doctor Knight had no alibi for the night of Folami’s death,” Jed offered. “And he lied about his whereabouts the night his wife was killed. He was right here in town. Still, unless Brackett can shake Knight’s story, his attorney would easily establish that the good doctor never left the Marriott.”

“And,” Maddie said advancing her partner’s thought, “Brackett hasn’t been able to shake the valet’s statement that Knight’s car never left the hotel’s underground parking. Brackett can’t find a taxi fare that matches up. In short, he can’t recreate how Knight could’ve gotten home to kill his wife and back to the hotel. And even then, the bartender would still be saying Knight sat on one of his stools until you called him. Bottom line: We can’t arrest a grieving husband without something solid, and what we got would be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

“We do need something better than what we’ve got,” Jed said, “that’s for damn sure.”

“And, with the public on edge,” Maddie added, “we need it soon.”

Chapter 22

Maddie found a note on her desk at the station saying the chief wanted to see her immediately. There was a small mint on the memo as if the frigging thing rested on a hotel room pillow. The signature: Arthur Dinkins, Special Assistant to the Chief of Police, Phoenix Police Department, was longer than the message itself.

Maddie sat outside Chief Layton’s office, across from his secretary. The woman had big hands, no, just long fingers. Maddie watched the secretary’s hands dart about her desk: moving papers, pounding her computer keyboard, answering phones and jotting down messages. Her hands were strong. Dink had once said the woman had the body of a mud wrestler, but then Dink had assigned one set of fantasy talents or another to every woman in the department.

After a while, Maddie’s attention drifted to the wall clock above the secretary’s desk. More particularly, she focused on the red second hand as it jerked its way around the dial. After the minute hand had jumped forward for the fourth time, Dink came out of the chief’s office.

“Please go right in Sergeant Richards.”

“You mean I’m not sweetcakes any longer?” Maddie whispered as she swished her way past him. Dink grinned.

As was his habit, at least where she was concerned, the chief did not offer Maddie a chair. “Sergeant, I told you I didn’t want the Beholder investigation carried out in the press.”

Dink closed the door after having overheard the chief’s accusation. That meant it would be all over the station within the hour.

“We’ve already covered this, Chief,” she reminded him. “And I agree.”

“Is that supposed to mean you didn’t see your friend’s newsflash last night?”

“Yes, sir,” Maddie said, spreading her feet for a more comfortable stance. “I didn’t see it. We’ve got an agreement with KC. She’s ambitious, but not without ethics.”

“Your faith in her integrity is misplaced, Sergeant. She interviewed Dr. Knight.”

“Our agreement didn’t prevent her from interviewing the relatives of the victims, sir. Did she reveal the confidential details on the brutalizing of the victims?”

He tapped the point of his pen on his desk blotter impatiently. “She asked Knight to confirm that the outfit his wife wore that day had not been found. We hadn’t released anything about his wife’s clothing.”

Maddie knew right then that KC had violated her agreement and continued to work her inside source. She inhaled slowly, then replied to the chief. “Sir, as soon as I leave your office I will get a hold of Ms. Carson.”

“You do that, Sergeant. You do that. I want to know if our agreement is in place or not. And one other thing, you didn’t have anything to do with this, right?”

The accusation stung. “From what you just told me, KC got this from Dr. Knight, not our department.”

“Correct to a point, Sergeant. I listened to her report several times. Her exact words were, ‘Dr. Knight has confirmed the outfit his wife wore, etc.’ She used him to
confirm
something she could only have learned from someone in this department. You hear what I’m saying? So I’ll ask again. Did you leak that information?”

“Sir, that’s not fair.”

“Oh, please, Sergeant, save the Tinkerbell routine. Life ain’t fair. Surely you know that by now. Let me be clear: I will find out who is leaking information from my department, and when I do that officer will be history.”

Maddie left the chief’s office with her insides feeling as if they were restraining an angry cat. The clothing angle was relatively new and only her squad knew its significance. After herself, Sue Martin best knew KC. Maddie didn’t like Brackett all that much, but he’d been a cop a long time to start leaking now. Then again, despite what he had said, Brackett remained bitter about not getting the lead. Then there was Archie Nigh, a man who possessed an ego which would easily allow him to believe KC’s flirtations was really about him.

***

“You bitch!” Maddie slammed her desk drawer shut with her foot. “We had an agreement. You broke it. I know you’re ambitious, but I thought even you had standards?”

“Maddie, I don’t understand,” KC protested. “I never break agreements and certainly never with you. What’s this about?”

“Don’t play cutie. Lifting your skirt for me won’t work. You were going to sit on anything you got in return for a capture exclusive. Your interview with Dr. Knight violated that agreement. Chief Layton wants a damn good explanation or he’ll consider our deal, as I’ll consider our friendship, broken.”

“Girlfriend, look our agreement only covered anything I might learn through your department. I got that from the victim’s husband.”

Maddie held the phone out from her face and looked at the mouthpiece. “Bullshit, KC. Your interview of Dr. Knight said, and I quote, ‘Dr. Knight
confirmed
’ and so forth. You had that information before you talked with him. We hadn’t released anything about Mrs. Knight’s clothing. You were working off something you could have only gotten from your contact here.”

“
Now
I understand why you’re upset,” KC replied. “Look, if I’m guilty of anything, it’s a poor choice of words. Knight told me. No one else, I swear. Perhaps Dr. Knight got the story about his wife’s outfit being missing from one of your officers. That led him to say to me that he could confirm. Then I carelessly carried that word into my report.”

“You’ve burned your bridge with me, Carson.” Maddie slammed down the phone, then added, “And no more of your
girlfriend
crap.”

***

At the four-mile mark, Gary Packard came into view from a side street and eased himself over until he was jogging beside Maddie. She reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair under her white headband. Neither of them spoke, but after another hundred yards she noticed their breathing had synchronized. His face glistened with sweat as they passed under a streetlight, and she briefly fantasized continuing beside him all the way into his shower.

While they were doing cool-down stretches together, he said, “I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich, and I’ve got a bottle of wine, one with a cork.”

“You certainly know how to turn a woman’s head.” After a shared easy laugh, she started toward her place; then she turned back. “Give me a few minutes. I need a quick shower.”

Maddie looked in on Bradley; her son was fast asleep. Then she stuck her head in to say good night to her mother and, predictably, found her asleep with a Kirk Douglas movie still playing. She turned off her mother’s bedside television like she did most nights and eased the door shut.

Maddie had been popping aspirin all day trying to lick the headache that had returned during her meeting with the chief. The jog hadn’t helped at all. The time had come for something more holistic. After showering, she slipped on a soft-blue jersey with spaghetti straps and a built-in shelf bra, along with a pair of tan Capri pants held up by a drawstring. She slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and topped off the outfit with a white short-sleeved poplin shirt. She tied a knot at the bottom, then untied it and then put the shirt back in her closet. It would just be one more thing to take off.

Gary had said he wanted to get to know her, but what’s to know. She had considered getting a three-line summary printed on a T-shirt: Cop. Divorced. Horny.

On the way up his driveway she glanced inside the cab of his pickup. It was clean and neat with one of those scented paper pine trees hanging below the mirror. She didn’t like things hanging from mirrors, but at least it wasn’t a pink garter belt.

Inside, his house didn’t match the image she had formed from his Levis and truck. There was a study with bookshelves crowded with hardbacks and a surprisingly tidy kitchen where he poured them a glass of Gewurztraminer. He then took her hand and led her into the living room where a spice fragrance candle, sitting next to a cheese plate, added intimacy. The sounds of Sinatra were suggestively sneaking through the house.
Come Fly With Me.
And Maddie was ready to soar.

Then Jed called on her cell phone.

“I’m out front. I didn’t want to knock. Your house was dark. Get out here fast.”

She heard his navy lighter snap shut, then his long inhale. Jed was smoking earlier than usual. She envied him. No, she didn’t. Well, maybe a little. The important thing Jed was outside, parked in front of her house.

Making the usual police business excuse, Maddie left Gary and had nearly reached Jed’s car before he saw her coming from across the street and not from her own home.