by Izzy Gomez
Amanda waited while Ryder gave her his boss’s name and phone number, then rose and left the room. She could feel his stare on her back, along with O’Donnell’s pissed off glare. He must hate that she was making more progress with the suspect.
As she approached, Greg looked up from typing and smiled. She immediately averted her gaze. She was still pissed about last night. But she didn’t have time to think about that right now.
It took less than five minutes for Stuart Ryder’s boss to confirm Ryder had worked a double shift the day Martina was killed. He also assured her there was no way Ryder could leave without someone noticing his absence.
Ryder wasn't their guy. Which left them with nothing but one lousy piece of hair and no idea where to find its owner.
Frustrated even though she’d found exactly what she expected, Amanda started for the interview room. She took two steps and ran into Greg.
“What?” she asked more sharply than she’d intended.
He winced. “Can we talk?”
“It'll have to wait.” She tried to get around him but he matched her step.
She stopped and glared at him. He looked back at her with an unreadable expression.
Dammit, she hated not being able to read him. Even more, she hated that it bothered her.
“We arrested your brother.”
It was like someone pricked her lungs with a pin. All the air left her. She grabbed onto the edge of the nearest desk. She’d been expecting it, knew Hank was their prime suspect. But theory and reality were vastly different.
Greg grabbed her elbow. She wanted to shake him off but was too unsteady. She might not want his support, but she needed it.
“What did you find?” Her voice was too weak. She hated this damn helplessness.
“We searched his condo.” Greg led her to her desk and nudged her into her chair. She went willingly.
“One of his steak knives is missing, so we took another for testing. It’s a match. We also found large quantities of marijuana, ecstasy and ketamine.”
Club drugs? She wouldn’t have guessed Hank was into that scene, but she didn’t know her brother that well. A week ago she wouldn’t have guessed him capable of murder.
“He smoked a lot of pot in high school and college, but I didn’t realize he’d moved on to anything harder." Were Hank's past abuses going to haunt her forever? “You think he used ketamine on her?”
“Russell’s got it on the tox screen.” Greg pulled another chair over and sat facing her. “My money’s on it. He had to do something to keep her quiet. Even tied up and gagged, she could have moved around enough to make some noise. He couldn’t take the chance your dad would hear her.”
Amanda nodded numbly. Her parents often got rodents in the attic, so Dad would have attributed any noises to that. Still, Hank probably hadn’t taken any chances. And Carla found a needle mark on Karen’s upper right arm. Karen's calendar and health records confirmed she hadn’t had any recent doctor appointments where she would have gotten an injection. A sedative was likely. They’d know soon enough.
“Your family’s lawyer was here, and he's going to contact your dad and help them find a criminal defense attorney.”
“Harper. I’m sure he was about as useful as always.” Karen worked with George Harper before she left her firm to work full time at Marquette. He’d been the Schreiber family’s lawyer as long as Amanda could remember. She’d disliked him just as long. There was something slippery about the man. Maybe it was his porn star mustache.
“If all lawyers were like Harper, our jobs would be a lot easier.”
Amanda snorted. She tried to settle the dozens of thoughts whirling in her head and focus on the most important. “Will he be arraigned by tomorrow?”
“I think so,” Greg said. “Why?”
She could feel his gaze on her face, knew he was studying her reactions. Knew he wanted to ask about last night. But she couldn’t talk about it. It was all too much.
“The funeral’s tomorrow at 1:00. I’m sure my dad’s going to be in denial about this. At least at first. He’ll want Hank there.” She dug her palms into her eyes until she saw spots. Did Hank deserve to stand at Karen’s gravesite and pretend to mourn when he was the one who’d killed her?
But it wasn’t about what Hank deserved. Dad deserved to have all his children there, even if for the last time.
“I’ll talk to Long. See if he can pull some strings and make sure Hank's arraigned first thing.”
ADA Jesse Long was a former cop and notorious womanizer. “Tell him I’ll sleep with him if he requests ROR so we don’t have to mess around with bail.”
She meant it as a joke. She knew Long would never request Hank be released with no bail when he’d been charged with homicide. From the hard look on his face, however, Greg didn’t appreciate the joke.
She looked quickly away. “Lighten up. I was kidding.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
Not willing to deal with their personal issues, she stood. “I need to get back in there. Thank you for telling me about Hank.”
He caught her arm before she could get away. “Last night—“
She shrugged her arm free. “Don’t. I can’t deal with that right now.” Before he could say any more, she stepped around him and rushed away.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Amanda hadn’t even closed the door behind her when her father’s voice assaulted her.
“Dad!” Emily cried.
Todd was immediately at Amanda’s side. He put his hand on her shoulder as she stared across the kitchen at Dad.
She’d expected a reaction. Just not this one.
No point pretending she didn’t know what this was about. “I didn’t arrest him, so you don’t have to attack me.”
“But you knew, didn’t you?” Dad stalked toward her.
Todd’s hand tightened on her shoulder. She took a step back.
“I knew he was their main suspect.”
Dad stopped a foot in front of her, his body tense. He looked ready to pounce. She'd never seen him like this. “How could you let them search his house? What happened to his rights? Why didn’t you stop those other detectives? He’s your brother!”
Days of not sleeping or eating caught up with her all at once. She let loose with everything built up inside. “And he’s your son! So what? It wasn’t my job to save his sorry ass. They had a warrant to search his condo, which is perfectly legal. I have no control over what they found. It’s not my fucking fault he had drugs there. And it’s not my fault he killed her. So back the fuck off.”
Todd’s hand dropped from her shoulder. He, Dad and Emily all stared at her in shock. She was normally as mild-mannered as Dad. She didn’t yell. But dammit, she was not taking the blame for Hank. And she was not going to let Dad make her feel guilty for not saving him this time.
She sucked in deep breaths, trying to calm down. Her hands shook as she deposited her bag of groceries on the counter and went to the refrigerator. She pulled out a bottle of Great Lakes Eliot Ness, twisted off the top and took a long drink. The cold beer felt good sliding down her throat. Too bad she couldn’t have ten more. Drink herself into oblivion and forget life for a night.
After downing half the bottle, she leaned back on the counter and faced her father. “I wasn’t involved in any of it. This isn’t my case, as I’ve told you repeatedly. And they’re not going to listen if I tell them not to arrest him when they have plenty of evidence. The drugs alone have him looking at serious charges.”
“So he’s going to prison no matter what?” Todd asked.
Amanda kept her focus on Dad. “Get him a good lawyer. He’s gonna need it.”
“I still don’t see how you could sit there while they take your own brother away in handcuffs.” Dad's forehead scrunched up.
When had he gotten all those wrinkles?
“Jesus, Dad. She already told you,” Emily snapped. Her dark eyes looked sunken in her pale face, making t
he purple rings beneath more prominent. Apparently none of them were sleeping.
“I wasn’t there.” Amanda held in a scream of frustration. When did she get to stop defending herself for doing her job and letting her colleagues do theirs?
Silence fell over the room, thicker than the custard she'd made last weekend. They all looked anywhere but at each other.
“Hank didn’t kill her,” Dad finally said. “You’ll see. He couldn’t kill his own mother. Not my son." The look he gave her sent a chill licking over her skin. In that moment, he was a stranger. "And you could have at least waited until after her funeral. He deserves to be there.”
She swallowed another scream and shoved her hands in her pockets to resist beating some sense into him. Hank could plead guilty and be sent to prison, and Dad still probably wouldn’t believe it was him. “I called in a favor with the prosecutor who has the case. He’s going to do everything he can to make sure Hank is arraigned first thing in the morning and makes bail.”
“Can we please, please focus on getting things ready for tomorrow?” Emily's voice took on the whine of their childhoods.
Amanda began unpacking the groceries. She’d picked up ingredients for spaghetti and meatballs. Simple comfort food.
Pulling out the pan and prep bowls she needed, she tried to keep her excitement from showing. This was the first time she'd cooked in Karen's top-of-the-line kitchen. Any other day, she'd be doing backflips over the opportunity. The stove alone made her drool.
“Dad, can you make sure Martina comes and cleans tomorrow morning? Pay her extra if you have to. I don’t want people in a filthy house.” Emily looked around the room with a wrinkled nose. To Amanda, the place looked spotless. Then again, she’d been born with an aversion to dust rags.
Uneasiness prickled the back of Amanda’s neck. “Who’s Martina?”
“The cleaning lady.” Dad sat down at the table and watched his gin and tonic swirl as he rolled it between his hands. “I called her twice today, but couldn’t get ahold of her.”
A cleaning lady named Martina? No. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
“What’s Martina’s last name?” A sense of foreboding punched Amanda's gut.
Dad gave her a puzzled look. “Martina Ryder.”
Chapter 15
Foreboding turned to sickness. She knew better to believe in coincidence.
She swallowed hard against the sour taste in her throat. “You’re going to have to find someone else to clean the house.”
Emily gave a long-suffering sigh. “Are you volunteering? Martina will do it if we offer her enough. She was always trying to scam Mom for extra money.”
“I guarantee she won’t.” Amanda paused, hating what came next. “She’s dead.”
Emily let out as startled huff as Dad nearly dropped his drink. The glass clattered against the tabletop.“What?”
“How do you know?” Emily asked.
Amanda closed her eyes for a moment to get herself together. Her brain exploded with possibilities and theories. But she couldn't focus on them right now.
Finally she opened her eyes and gave all her attention to the onion in her left hand and the knife in her right. “It’s my case.”
“Your case?” Todd asked.
Amanda looked to where he stood in the doorway to the family room. Hovering on the periphery, as usual. “Yeah. Why? How would you know about it?”
Todd shook his head. “I didn’t. I just meant it's a coincidence you got this particular case.”
“Do you think it’s related to your mother?” Dad asked.
She’s not my mother. “I don’t know. I just found out thirty seconds ago.” Hell yes they were related. She needed to call Greg.
Her stomach went rolley-poley-topsy-turvy. She couldn’t call him. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet, even about this. She would call Al.
“Why would they be related?” Todd said. “Why would Hank kill the cleaning lady?”
Dad’s face hardened. “He wouldn’t. Just like he didn’t kill his mother.”
Amanda focused on the onion. She would call Al as soon as she got through this awful dinner.
“Our cases are connected.” Amanda stood at her kitchen counter, its chipped formica vastly inferior to the granite countertop she'd been cooking on earlier. On the stove, a roast browned so she could put it in the slow cooker in the morning. She wouldn’t have time to make anything fancier for the post-funeral dinner.
“What cases?” Al asked.
“Karen and Martina Ryder.” Martina had been killed with a knife from her kitchen. That seemed to be Hank’s preferred weapon.
“I know you want to be involved in your stepmom’s case. But this is grasping at straws.”
Amanda ignored him. He’d understand once she explained. “Martina Ryder was my dad’s cleaning lady. She was killed on Thursday, a few hours after Karen died. Normally she worked on Wednesdays, but last week she switched and worked on Thursday.”
Al was silent. Amanda let him process what she’d said. He didn’t believe in coincidence any more than she did.
“So what are you thinking?” Through the phone she heard his knuckles crack. A sign his gears were clicking.
Amanda turned the roast. Fat splattered and she jumped back to avoid getting hit in the face. “Hank wouldn’t have been expecting her to be at Dad’s Thursday. She must have seen something. Seen him bringing Karen down from the attic or out of the house. He can’t let a witness live. So he follows her to her house, or finds out where she lives. Goes there, grabs a knife from her kitchen and kills her.”
“It would be one hell of a coincidence,” Al said.
Excitement hummed inside her; she practically vibrated. She loved this part of a case, when pieces fell into place. It was the satisfying rush that made everything worth it. “We have no good leads in her case. It wasn’t a robbery, and it wasn’t her deadbeat son. Nothing else makes sense. According to Russell, the guy we want was about Hank’s height. And we know Hank likes kitchen knives.”
“You like kitchen knives. Hardly enough to convict on.”
Al liked to tease her about what he saw as a girly hobby. She noticed he didn’t complain, though, when she brought him leftovers.
"At least I can hit a target." Any time he got on her case about her cooking, she reminded him that he was the worst marksman in the division. Much worse and they'd take his badge. But she was in such a good mood from this development, she resisted her usual pattern of further teasing.
"Shut the fuck up, Schreiber."
It was a major sensitive spot for him. Which made it all the more fun to irritate him. “There was a hair in the attic, right? We found a hair with Ryder too.”
“Dark, wavy, about four inches?” Al asked.
Hank had dark, wavy hair that he'd grown long in front. “They'll match. I'm sure of it.” She turned off the stove and tossed the tongs on the counter.
For the first time in days, her head felt light. She gave in to her giddiness and danced around the kitchen. This moment, this feeling, was why she loved her job.
Hank had killed Martina Ryder to cover up his crime. She knew it. And with that hair, they could prove it.
And O’Donnell was going to shit bricks that she’d broken the Ryder case. Icing on the cake.
Right now, she'd focus on that lovely icing and forget her family hiding inside the cake. Or some other weird metaphor.
“We’re working on a warrant for Hank’s DNA. We’ll see if you’re right.”
“We can still match the hairs from each scene. Prove they’re related.” She forced herself to stop dancing even though adrenaline pulsed through her. Breaks like this made her restless. She wanted to go to work now and find a lab person to make the comparison.
But she'd have to wait until morning. Brown told her to take the whole day off, but she’d be damned if she was missing this so she could sit around with Karen’s relatives.
“If they’re related,” Al said f
irmly.
Amanda understood his warning but refused to be discouraged. “You know I’m right.”
“You know I’m right, too. What we have is circumstantial. We need proof.”
“The hair’s the proof.”
“I’ll get on it first thing.”
“I’ll be there. I’m not going to my dad’s all day.” She snorted a laugh. “Besides, I’m persona non grata around there since I let you guys arrest Hank.”
“Your dad thinks he’s innocent?”
“It’s denial. Can you blame him?”
Al made a noise she knew was his equivalent of a verbal shrug. “You know this doesn’t mean she’ll put you back on the case? She’ll take you off the Ryder case.”
Amanda didn’t want to think about that right now. She preferred to focus on the evidence she’d uncovered. “I know. What matters is we caught a break and we have one more thing to nail Hank’s ass to the wall.”
Al laughed. This was huge if it made him cheerful enough to laugh. "I always knew you were a little screwey, but I never realized how messed up you truly are.”
“Thanks. Back attcha.” She stuck out her tongue at the phone. “Just because he’s family doesn’t mean I condone what he did. Even to Karen. And especially to Martina Ryder.”
“Get some sleep, Schreiber. We’ll work this out tomorrow.”
She ended the call and turned back to her cooking. He was right, she should sleep. But the rush of discovery had her too wired. She was in for another long night.
“Hair’s a match.” Voegler dropped the images on the desk in front of Greg.
Greg picked them up and studied them. They looked the same to him, but he hardly had a discerning eye. The important part was they looked the same to whoever in the lab reviewed them. “Now we need Hank's hair so we can put him at both scenes.”
“At least we have a viable suspect for Martina Ryder.” Amanda stood next to Voegler. She very deliberately didn’t look at Greg.
She needed to get over being pissed at him for not telling her about Karen’s sexual assault. Likely her sudden cold shoulder was about more than her stepmom's case. Whatever was really causing the burr up her ass, she needed to get over that too.
