The Trouble With Murder (9 page)

“Tell me about it. But believe me,
I won’t make the same mistakes next time. Barry was a stupid choice, for one.
Everything is much easier if the fucking CFO is transferring the money out for
you.” She gave me a patronizing smile. “But that’s nothing you need to worry
your pretty little head about. You need to worry about how you’ll look in
orange and how you’ll make new friends and live in tight spaces.”

I got up and started for the door.
Then I turned back.

“Out of curiosity, was I convenient,
or did you pick me deliberately?”

She smirked. “Barry had you picked
out from the beginning.” Then she leaned forward and whispered. “He doesn’t
like you.”

I smirked back. “I know. Give him a
message for me, will you?”

“What message?”

“Tell him I said, ‘checkmate.’”

Outside, I pulled the recorder from
my back pocket and turned it off.

The next day, or rather later that same day, just after
seven in the morning, my doorbell rang. Given that I’d spent most of the night
waiting for the thieving witch Sandra to return home, I hadn’t been in bed very
long. And what time I had spent there had been fitful, my sleep plagued with
more disturbing dreams of memories past.

I smashed a pillow down on my head
and rolled over. I noted distantly that my shirt was damp; I’d been sweating. My
alarm was set for ten. It was Saturday; I thought sleeping until ten was
reasonable. Especially since this was the first day of my vacation.

The doorbell persisted, however,
followed by angry banging on the front door. It reminded me vaguely of the way
Hensley had attacked the door the day before. But two visits from the same cop in
eighteen hours was unlikely, right?

I threw myself out of bed and
stumbled to the door with my eyes still half shut. I knew without consulting a mirror
I looked . . . bad. Mornings aren’t really my thing. Let this be a lesson to
whomever it was pounding on my door.

I heard a sharp voice in between
rounds of banging.

“Ms. Grey! You need to open the door.”

“Is the house on fire?” I called
back, my tongue still thick with sleep.

“No. Open the door.”

“Is someone bleeding to death?”

“No. If you don’t
—
“

“If there’s no emergency, come back
in three hours.”

“Ms. Grey, it’s Detective Hensley.
Open the door or I will.”

Uh-oh.

I fumbled with the locks then
yanked the door open and winced at the bright sunlight.

“Do you know what time it is?” I
demanded.

Hensley chose to take my remark as
a sincere inquiry and not the sarcastic gibe it was. He looked at his watch.

“Seven twelve.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
I groaned, sagging against the doorjamb.

Hensley had another officer with
him: a young, uniformed man I didn’t recognize. They both looked serious, as if
they meant business. The sleep was clearing from my brain quickly now, and I
pretty much figured their visit wasn’t good.

“I need you to come with me to the
station,” Hensley said. “I need to ask you some questions.”

I was wearing sweats and a t-shirt,
and I looked no better than I had the first time Hensley had seen me. The
officer seemed to be considering whether or not I was crazy. At the moment, I
wasn’t sure, either.

I spun around and headed for the
stairs. I heard both men hurry into the house then thunder down the stairs
behind me.

“Where are you going?” Hensley
asked sharply.

“Can I get my keys and some shoes
before you drag me off to jail?”

I went into my room and grabbed my
bag and tennis shoes from the floor.

“I’m not taking you to jail.”

“You mean that’s not our first
stop,” I corrected.

I shut my bedroom door then went
into the bathroom down the hall.

“What are you doing?” Hensley
asked.

“Relax, Detective,” I said, walking
in and setting my stuff on the counter. “You’ll give yourself a stroke.”

I caught sight of myself in the
mirror and cringed. Bad was an understatement.

I grabbed a band from the drawer
and tied my hair up. Pieces stuck out all over, but it was fine for an early
morning interrogation and jail. I fished out a pin from the drawer and pinned
my bangs out of my face, both cops looking on carefully, as if waiting for me
to pull out a weapon I kept stored there.

A minute later we were piled in two
cars, the officer in a marked Crown Vic, and Hensley and me in an unmarked
Crown Vic. I sat in the back while Hensley drove. We were separated by a metal
grate. The backseat smelled like urine and vomit, and there was a
suspicious-looking stain on the floor behind the passenger seat. The only
highlight was Hensley had refrained from using handcuffs. Technically, I wasn’t
under arrest. But I had no doubt that was his intent after a bit of
questioning.

The officer went his own way while
Hensley drove me to the police station located on Timberline Road, just north
of Drake. The building was new and characteristically modern, with lots of pointy
angles, metal, and glass. I think the tax dollars could have been put to better
use, but I’m not in charge of making those decisions.

Hensley parked in the back and led
me in through a rear door. We rode the elevator to the second floor then made
our way down a long hallway. We arrived at a door marked
crimes against property
and went in,
coming to a small lobby of sorts. The desk in front of the door was empty, the
secretary having gone home for the day, or the weekend, and only a few of the
desks and offices in the space beyond were busy with activity. Offices and
conference rooms lined the perimeter of the space. Black letters painted on the
glass doors identified each one. In the middle, a dozen mismatched desks were
crammed together, with narrow walkways snaking between them. Hensley led me to
the far wall and into a room marked
interrogation
.

These rooms are intentionally cold
and intimidating, and this one was no different. There was a single metal table
bolted to the floor with a large steel ring welded to the middle of it, used for
securing handcuffs. There were two plain metal chairs on either side of the
table, and Hensley deposited me in one of them. He called to someone nearby and
told him to watch the door then stepped away. The guard, a plainclothes man in
his forties, remained outside and paid me little attention, instead continuing
to read through the thick file he held.

Hensley returned a few minutes
later with a stack of files in his hands, which he arranged over the opposite
side of the table. Then he sat and pulled his notepad from his pocket, flipping
to the page he wanted. A business card fell out and he held it up.

“Want to call your lawyer?”

The card I’d given him yesterday.

“No. Not yet.” No sense racking up
a huge legal bill if I could clear things up myself.

“You have the right to legal
counsel.”

“I can invoke at any time.”

He set the card aside and consulted
this notepad.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Do I get three guesses?”

“You’re in enough trouble as it is.
You might want to cooperate, make things a little easier for yourself.”

“I’m not going to make it any
easier for you to put me in prison,” I said seriously.

“One step at a time.”

“Don’t you want to arrest me?” I
asked. Then it hit me. “Sandra called you.”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s filing
charges against you for breaking and entering. She says you broke into her
house last night. Do you know anything about that?”

I had to admit, I liked her style.
Always on the offense.

“Breaking and entering?” I smiled.
“We work together. She told me about the key she keeps under a pot. I went by
to see her last night, but she wasn’t home. I wanted to wait for her, but it
started raining. I used the key to let myself in.”

“She claims she doesn’t leave keys
lying around, and that she wouldn’t have told you about them if she did.”

“I’m not surprised. I went to ask
her about the twenty thousand dollars missing from White Real Estate.”

“Why ask her about the money?”

“Because I didn’t steal it. I
thought she might know something.”

“Did she?”

I reached into my bag and withdrew
the recorder. I set it on the table between us and pressed
play
. We listened as the conversation
replayed. Nothing in his expression changed, but he began shifting in his seat when
Sandra finally confessed. I hit the
stop
button and looked at him.

“See, she’s using her little report
to keep you guys busy, focused on me.”

He sighed and set the notepad
aside. “Did you put the key back?”

“Yep. Wasn’t there, huh?”

“She’s saying it never was.”

“See the concrete?” I asked,
remembering the mark the key had left.

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t
need to.

“Okay, so what now?” I asked. “Can
I go?”

The detective reached forward and
picked up the recorder. “I’m sure this will help clear up a few things,” he
said, slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“I made a copy of that,” I said,
pointing to his jacket. “In case it ‘disappears’ or anything.”

He shot me a dark look.

I wasn’t long on trust for Hensley.
If left up to him, I would have been arrested and charged with a felony. That
didn’t give me a whole lot of faith in the system.

“I’m just saying,” I said, raising
my hands. “I told you I didn’t know anything about the missing money, but you
didn’t believe me.”

“
Everyone
who sits on that
side of the table says that,” he shot back.

“But you didn’t even bother to look
past the nice, neat package Paige handed you. A little extra effort seems worth
it for that one person who is
actually
telling the truth.”

“I’ll have someone give you a ride
home,” he said, gathering his things.

“What about that breaking and
entering bit?”

He stood. “Filing a false police
report is a crime. It’s something I will take up with Ms. York when next I see
her.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

_______________

Hensley called an officer to drive me home, but no one could
pick me up for fifteen or twenty minutes. I agreed to meet
the officer
in the lobby then decided to look up Ellmann. I still needed to sign paperwork,
and since I was already there, I couldn’t find any good reason to put it off. Even
though I did look for one.

Ellmann had instructed me to call
him when I arrived, but so far I hadn’t done anything else he’d told me to do,
so I didn’t see any reason to start now. I wandered out of Hensley’s division
then stopped a middle-aged guy dressed in jeans and polo shirt in the hallway. He
gave me directions, his quintessential mustache dancing as he spoke.

I thanked him then moved away,
finding the door marked
crimes against
persons
. It stood open, so I walked in. As I passed another empty
receptionist’s desk and entered another bullpen, I experienced déjà vu. This
space was a mirror image of the one Hensley worked in. The differences were the
number of desks and the level of activity. While property crimes had simply
been occupied, this division was
busy.
More than twice as many people
were at work in here, and there were possibly twice as many desks. The
arrangement of working spaces crowded together seemed to defy the physical laws
of science; so many desks could not possibly fit into the allotted space.

The directions I’d been given
turned my attention to the far corner. There, with his back to me, I spied the
figure of the detective I sought, his size making him hard to miss. He was
sitting at his desk, a smaller man in a suit standing beside him, both of them
intently watching the computer screen. I slipped quietly through the maze of
desks and stopped behind them, watching over Ellmann’s shoulder. The computer
screen was split in half, the scene playing out from opposite angles.

I knew what this video was. This
was the security camera footage from Elizabeth Tower.

Stacy Karnes stood at the counter
browsing through a brochure she’d found there, her purse sitting where I’d
later found it. The time readout on the screen said 1813. After reaching the
back of the brochure, she put it down and looked around. She pulled her phone
from her back pocket and glanced at it, possibly checking the time since she
wasn’t wearing a watch.

Why hadn’t she answered the
phone?
I thought, my guilt weighing heavily on me.

Stacy tucked the phone back into
her pocket then picked up another pamphlet. Behind her, the lobby door opened
and the masked assailant walked in.

The person in the mask seemed to
speak to Stacy. Stacy put the pamphlet down and turned around. I was no expert,
but she didn’t seem overly concerned until she laid eyes on the figure, and
then I could only guess it was the ski mask that upset her. Did that mean she
knew the person? Had she recognized the person’s voice? I didn’t know yet, but
I was more determined than ever to find out.

After turning around and seeing the
mask, Stacy lifted her free hand and clamped it over her mouth, taking a step
backward. The figure withdrew a gloved right hand from the front pocket of the
hooded sweatshirt, holding a knife. The knife I’d seen covered in blood. The
assailant stepped forward, pursuing Stacy. Unexpectedly, Stacy raised her right
foot and thrust it forward, connecting with the assailant’s belly. It wasn’t a
move born of skill or practice, but of an instinct to survive. The figure
doubled over and stumbled back momentarily. Stacy sprinted for the door. The
assailant recovered quickly, however, and grabbed the hood of Stacy’s
sweatshirt, pulling her backward.

Stacy spun around to face the
attacker, attempted to fight the attacker off, but the attacker sunk the knife
into her belly once, then twice. I saw her mouth open and knew she was
screaming. It was the scream I’d heard in the parking lot, the scream that
reverberated in my dreams, and the scream echoing inside my head now. The
assailant stabbed her a third time and she collapsed. When she was down, the
assailant squatted, raising the knife above Stacy’s chest. Then suddenly the
assailant stopped and spun around toward the door. I knew the assailant was
seeing me.

On-screen, I walked into the lobby
and stopped. For a beat, my eyes were locked with the assailant’s. Then the
assailant jumped up and ran toward me. I watched as I dropped back into a defensive
stance and brought my arms up. My physical encounter with the figure was brief.
I blocked the blow, landed one of my own, then the stairwell and elevator doors
burst open. The attacker stumbled for the door then out into the night.