Cut and Run

by Allison Brennan

  “Okay,” he said cautiously.

  “We may have found Ricky Albright. We believe he’s alive and has been in hiding.”

  Ash stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  “Ninety percent. Nate’s checking it out. It can’t leave your lips. According to our witness who gave us the information, Ricky believes that a cop was involved in his parents’ murders. So until we know for certain we’re keeping everything in-house.”

  Lucy had weighed telling Ash, but he was taking the case so personally and he had done the bulk of the forensics work on the bones—a painstaking and emotionally difficult chore—so she wanted to give him some hope.

  “I won’t say a word. I hope to God you’re right.”

  “I should know for certain by the end of the day.”

  “Anything you want, you got. Name it.”

  “Not if it’s going to get you in trouble, but I need information about the Victoria Mills homicide.”

  “That’s not your case.”

  “No. It’s not even an FBI investigation. But I have reason to believe the Albright murders and the Mills murder are connected. All I want is to look at the forensics.”

  “Detective Reed is pretty good, have you talked to her?”

  “I’ve been trying. She hasn’t responded to my calls.”

  “Well, you can look, but without clearance you can’t take.”

  “All I want is a look.”

  Ash led her to his corner of the lab. He pulled over a second stool for her, and she sat. “It’s all on the computer. I could pull the physical files, but it would take longer.”

  “This is fine.”

  Ash logged in and pulled up the Mills files. “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. I read the autopsy report, but I don’t have details that weren’t made public. I want to visualize the scene. Based on the autopsy, she was killed at close range, stabbed twice, pushed into the pool.”

  “Yep.” He enlarged the autopsy report, read it along with her. “Tox screen negative—no drugs or alcohol. She was a very healthy woman.”

  “May I?” she asked, and motioned to the keyboard and mouse.

  “It’s all yours. I need to check on an experiment, if you’re done before I get back just log out.”

  “Thanks, Ash. I really appreciate this.”

  Ash left, and she scrolled through the crime scene photos. The scene itself appeared almost serene. Nothing out of place. She had been stabbed only a few feet from the pool, either fell or was pushed in. Because the killer was so close and only removed the knife twice, there wasn’t a lot of blood spatter, only a few large bloodstains on the sandstone, which had absorbed the drops before the police arrived.

  Lucy brought up the police report. Some of it she already knew, like that Victoria had been found the following morning at eight by the pool maintenance guy. She’d died between ten and eleven Friday night. The investigation showed that she had disarmed the alarm at nine twenty that evening and entered through the front door. It had never been reset, but the front door was locked. No sign of forced entry, but the rear sliding glass door was unlocked—and Victoria’s fingerprints had been found on it.

  Further investigation showed that she had brought over a plate of finger sandwiches, orange juice, and champagne that she’d picked up earlier in the evening—they were for an open house that was supposed to run from eleven to two Saturday. According to the police investigation, they learned that Victoria didn’t list many houses and when she did they were high-end, million-dollar properties and usually for friends. This house was listed for $1.6 million in Alamo Heights, not far from Lucy and Sean in Olmos Park. The open house had been advertised, but everything else about the murder itself suggested that Victoria knew her killer.

  Lucy scrolled through the rest of the report. Her purse and wallet had been recovered in the kitchen, nothing missing. Why had she gone outside? To check on something? Did she see something? Did she just want some fresh air? The yard was beautiful, with lots of flowers and trees and a black-bottom pool with a waterfall. Maybe she wanted to walk the grounds, think about what to tell prospective buyers, or maybe she was talking to someone. Maybe someone came with her.

  Victoria’s car had been dusted for prints, and there were no new prints, though both Mitch Corta’s and Stanley Grant’s prints had been found in the vehicle. Not a surprise. No prints in the house other than the owners’, a long-time housekeeper’s, and Victoria’s—which lent credence to the idea that Victoria had let her killer into the house.

  A supplemental report from the owners said nothing was missing—no jewelry, art, knives, et cetera. That meant the killer brought the knife with him. For the purpose of killing Victoria, or was it a knife that he always carried? Lucy didn’t assume it was for murder—she knew many people who routinely carried a knife, mostly cops or former military as well as her husband. But a knife was a far more intimate weapon than a gun.

  And much quieter.

  She looked for surveillance reports. In a neighborhood like the one where Victoria was murdered, many of the residents likely had security cameras. The owners had no cameras, just the alarm system. There was no such security report. Why? Wouldn’t they canvass the neighborhood? Check cameras?

  She flipped through the other pages. Two officers talked to neighbors. No one heard or saw anything. One couple who were walking their dog at eleven fifteen that night said that they saw Victoria’s car in the driveway but no other vehicle. The killer either was gone or had parked in a different location and walked over.

  That seemed unlikely. A stranger walking in that ritzy neighborhood might be noticed.

  Unless they looked like they belonged there.

  Jennifer Reed had interviewed Mitch Corta first. In her notes, he was upset and distracted. He confirmed that she was going to the house to set up for the open house the next day. He had an alibi—he was in Bandera appraising a massive ranch. The owner of the property verified that he arrived at four that Friday afternoon and stayed for dinner, leaving around ten thirty.

  Impossible to get all the way to Alamo Heights by eleven unless he was practically flying. It was nearly sixty miles, and some roads you couldn’t go sixty, let alone a hundred.

  She’d also interviewed Stanley Grant. He’d had dinner with his sister that night, left at nine, and gone home. No real alibi, but he had a security system on his house. It would have been easy enough to check—which no one did. Still, many systems could be bypassed or cheated. He could reprogram it to show he was in when he was out and vice versa. But in her initial notes, Reed didn’t think Grant was guilty.

  She’d interviewed Victoria’s family, including her brother, Simon, and only one comment from him was interesting:

  “Victoria believed someone was following her. She didn’t know who, and she was more angry than scared. Because that was her.”

  Lucy thought about the two black SUVs that had followed her and Nate and the sedan that had followed Max and Sean when they left Harrison Monroe’s office.

  The notes about the alleged stalker were vague, and it didn’t appear that Reed followed up on it, other than to ask Mitch and Stan about it—they both said that Victoria mentioned a “damn SUV” that she thought she saw more than once, but it was more than a month before she was killed and they didn’t think much of it because she didn’t mention it again.

  No interview of Harrison Monroe, no mention of him at all in the report. Two men had been interviewed and let go—a known sex offender who lived in the neighborhood with his sister. She said they watched a movie and were asleep by eleven thirty and her brother didn’t leave the house. Didn’t mean he didn’t but based on forensics, it’s clear that Victoria wasn’t sexually assaulted and, again, Lucy believed she knew her killer. Reed thought so as well—she’d mentioned it at least three times in different areas of the report.

  The other person who was interviewed—twice—was the rear neighbor. Robert Clemson, fifty. Divorced, lived al
one on the half-acre property. He acted squirrelly, according to Reed’s notes, so she asked him to come in. The second interview was because he lied about a fact in his first interview—he initially said that he was home all night but didn’t hear anything, but later the other neighbors, the dog walkers, said that they saw him drive away from his house at ten thirty that night.

  In the second interview he told Reed that he had been flustered. He knew Victoria and had literally forgotten that he’d left to meet a friend for drinks. The friend, Melissa Randolph, had confirmed his alibi. But there wasn’t a note anywhere about where they had met or why so late. All Reed wrote was: Melissa Randolph, San Antonio, met Clemson for drinks 10:45–midnight. Her contact information and driver’s license number were both listed.

  Was that a real alibi? Who was Clemson? Who forgot that they left their house at night especially after their neighbor was murdered? He wasn’t interviewed until Monday … it was possible he forgot, thought it was a different night.

  But Lucy wanted to talk to him herself.

  Reed may have followed up again with him and Melissa Randolph if Stanley Grant hadn’t confessed.

  There was one interesting piece of evidence suggesting that the killer drove to the house and parked behind Victoria’s white Mercedes coupe. Two drops of blood were found on the brick drive. Forensics concluded they belonged to Victoria. They were located where the passenger door of another vehicle may have been. No tire marks, no other indication of who had been driving the second vehicle. But someone had driven the killer.

  Or picked him up.

  From everything she heard about Victoria, Lucy didn’t think she would be irresponsible enough to show a house at night to a stranger. Not in this day and age when there were so many reports of real estate agents being attacked.

  She looked through the reports again because something was missing … and then she realized what it was. There was absolutely no blood found in the house. The killer didn’t exit through the house. He left quickly—that was Lucy’s educated guess—rinsed his knife and hands in the pool and walked out through the side gate.

  But there was nothing to indicate whether the gate had been swabbed or inspected.

  She tracked Ash down. “Ash, did you process the Victoria Mills crime scene?”

  “No. Not my case. Why?”

  “It doesn’t say whether the side gate was inspected for evidence. But there was no blood in the house, I don’t think the killer left that way. Even if he rinsed off in the pool, there would be trace on the doors, water in the house, something to tell us he left that way. And the front door was locked, but the side gate didn’t have a lock, just a latch. That gate went out to the driveway, and there was a small amount of blood found on the driveway.”

  “I can ask Kyle. He was in charge.”

  “And?” It was his tone that had Lucy curious.

  “He has seniority, but I was promoted over him because he’s lazy. Don’t repeat that. He’s not incompetent—he just doesn’t like being in the field. Give him a microscope and he’s great. But collecting evidence? We butt heads.”

  “Would you mind reviewing the forensics and seeing if anything else was missed? That’s the only thing that jumped out at me, but there could be more.”

  “Yeah, but you really owe me, because if I find anything wrong I’m going to write him up and then our working relationship is going to be worse than it already is.”

  “You are the single most meticulous CSI I have ever worked with. We need more of you, and I would be happy to tell your boss that.”

  “Actually, your boss already wrote up a commendation for my file on the last case we worked on. That must have come from you.”

  “You did an amazing job. Your computer simulation alone was worthy of a commendation, but the fact that you worked so well with the FBI lab at Quantico is what helped us solve the case.”

  “Well, I appreciate it. Really. I’ll take a look, but I don’t know that it will do any good. As far as we’re concerned, the case is closed.”

  “Because Grant confessed?”

  “And we haven’t heard about anything else. If it went to trial, we’d prepare for court, but…” He shrugged, then eyed her. “He is guilty, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said. “He recanted.”

  Ash snorted. “And every felon is innocent.”

  “This time … there are some extenuating circumstances. I honestly can’t say whether he’s innocent or guilty, but because this case is connected to the Albright case, I need to look at every possibility.”

  * * *

  Lucy was driving back to FBI headquarters when she had a call from an unknown number.

  “Kincaid,” she answered.

  “It’s Nate. We have him.”

  “Ricky?”

  “He’s alive and well. We’re leaving in the morning. We don’t want to be on the road at night.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “He’s okay? Really?”

  “He doesn’t want to leave, but Javier—Jill Young’s cousin—talked to him. He’s scared and confused. He’s not a kid—he went from nine to adult—but is still a kid, if that makes sense.”

  Lucy understood. “Did you show him the pictures?”

  “Chavez.”

  “How certain was he?”

  “Absolutely certain. He didn’t hesitate.”

  She’d had Nate create a series of photos that included Chavez, Douglas, the sheriff of Kerr County, and three FBI agents.

  “And no one else?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Douglas is angry that we cut him out. We executed a warrant on the bank—Pollero is in the wind. Left the house early, didn’t go to work, visited his daughter for breakfast, and is just gone.”

  “Damn.”

  “And I didn’t tell Douglas what we were doing. He read me the riot act. Chavez wasn’t the lead detective.”

  “But he was there at the Youngs’ house when they questioned the twins.”

  “Maybe we should alert Douglas.” But it would not go over well.

  “Just because Ricky didn’t identify him doesn’t mean that he isn’t also involved.”

  Lucy knew Nate was right, but she didn’t like being put in this situation.

  “I guess we’re lucky at this point that he wants nothing to do with me, but I’m going to tell Rachel. Let her make the call about who is looped in.”

  “How did she take my spontaneous trip?”

  “You’re using vacation, not sick time.”

  “That’s it?”

  “She’s hard to read. My gut tells me she’ll put a comment in our files, but she’s not going to go further. But my gut could be wrong.”

  “Not usually.”

  “She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t angry.”

  “Good enough. What’s been going on with the case?”

  “I’ve been working with Sean and Max, which is interesting.”

  Nate snorted. “I’ll bet.”

  She filled him in on the case. “I can use you as soon as you return.”

  Nate said, “We’re leaving at dawn. Hope to be in San Antonio between one and two in the afternoon—and we need a safe place for Ricky. He can’t go into the system—not until we know he’s safe. He’s on edge, Lucy—I don’t know how else to describe it. He doesn’t want to leave but is doing it anyway—his choice. But he’s not comfortable. He’s been living with this fear for a long time, I don’t know if he even knows what he’s afraid of anymore, but being here in the middle of these mountains with a man he trusts and considers a father figure has been his only constant for three years.”

  Now they were getting into a sensitive area. Ricky Albright was a minor child, and he was also a witness to a crime. But Nate was right—if he was in the system Chavez might be able to get to him, if not Chavez he could call in someone else. There were more than a few people involved in this conspiracy. Ricky said that four men came to his house that day three years ago … were they in
Chavez’s employ? Or did they work for Harrison Monroe? Was there a connection between Chavez and Monroe?

  “Bring him to Saint Catherine’s,” she said. “I’ll talk to Father Mateo, I’m sure he’ll take him for a few days. No one will think to look for him there. Plus Father has experience with boys like Ricky.” Scared, defiant, with the ability to disappear if they had a chance.

  “And who deals with CPS? We can’t hide him indefinitely.”

  “No one. As far as society is concerned, Ricky is dead or still missing—protecting him is our number one goal.”

  “And do you tell Rachel?”

  “I don’t know. I think I have to … and pray she agrees with our plan.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Sean and Max spent all morning and most of the afternoon driving by every property that Harrison Monroe had bought or sold, per the real estate transactions that Sean’s Realtor had pulled for him. Max was growing increasingly frustrated because there was nothing unusual about the properties. They were mostly vacant land.

  “It’s not common to buy a piece of property and sell it a year later without improvements,” Sean said. “It’s a perfect money-laundering scheme.”

  “Except that it leaves a paper trail.”

  “Like Ryan said, without anyone specifically looking for it, he can get away with it. The statute of limitations is, I think, ten years. And we don’t have access to his tax returns—we don’t know what he’s claiming or what he’s doing with the land, if he’s renting it for cattle grazing or adding improvements or what.”

  “This is a waste of time,” Max said. “We’ve driven by nine properties, nothing has jumped out at us as wrong. Nothing is wrong. If he’s laundering money we’re not going to see it hanging from the trees.”

  “Testy, aren’t we.”

  She was. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be with Ryan and Eve and not think about Victoria Mills or Denise Albright, money laundering or murder.

  She frowned. Denise and her family didn’t deserve to be murdered. Victoria didn’t deserve to die. But for the first time, Max thought a case was unprovable. They needed someone to talk.