Murder in Just Cause

by Anne Cleeland

  “Yes, sir. He wrote me letters and would leave them at the front desk.”

  “Did he telephone or email? Any messages on voice mail?”

  Munoz shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “He was an older man, then?”

  “No, sir. He was in his thirties—but he was another of your paranoids, sir, so it could be that he was reluctant to use electronics. He thought there was a massive conspiracy against him, because he claimed he’d killed a cop.”

  “And had he?” asked Acton in a neutral tone.

  “No, sir. I did research it, just in case, but he told a very sketchy story, and there had been no officer deaths, either on or off-duty, during the time period he claimed.”

  Acton thought this over. “Do you believe he may have been an informant?”

  Munoz knit her brow. “I don’t know; if he was, he didn’t mention it. Since I don’t do drug detail very often, I’m not familiar with all the informants.”

  Acton nodded. “Did you file his letters, Sergeant?”

  Munoz looked a bit surprised. “No, sir. I just threw them out.”

  “Can’t blame her—it’s a little creepy,” Doyle offered.

  Acton did not look at Doyle, but instead said, “They probably should have been filed with his report, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Munoz steadily.

  “Did you read them?”

  “No sir.”

  There was a small pause, and Doyle didn’t make the mistake of coming to Munoz’s defense again.

  Acton nodded. “Tell me about him, then.”

  “Caucasian male, mid-thirties. An Aussie, sir, and he looked to be a user.”

  This was an unfortunate truism of police work; after enough experience, an officer tended to recognize the subtle signs of drug addiction, despite the user’s best efforts to hide them.

  “Any stated profession?”

  “He said he worked for the veteran’s outreach at Holy Trinity Clinic.”

  Doyle blinked, as this seemed of interest. Holy Trinity Church had been the meeting place for the villains in the sex-slavery-and-corruption case that Acton had taken down. The Church’s free clinic was still functioning, even though the Church itself had burned down under best-be-forgotten circumstances.

  “And he told you he’d killed a police officer?”

  “Yes sir—although he couldn’t give me the victim’s name. He said he’d choked him out, during a set-to. He’d meant only to take him down, but he’d used too much force, and the man died.”

  “And where was this?”

  Munoz lifted a corner of her mouth. “He claimed it happened at the Clinic, sir.”

  Acton’s gaze turned toward the windows and he was silent for a moment. For her part, Doyle was dying to hear the reason why the kook had claimed it had been necessary to kill the supposed police officer at the Clinic—obviously, there was some paranoid conspiracy at play—but interestingly enough, Acton did not ask, and instead changed the subject.

  “Did your second walk-in refer in any way to the first one?”

  With a slight frown, Munoz slowly shook her head. “No, sir.”

  Acton considered this. “Did you have the sense the two were connected?”

  Again, Munoz shook her head, slightly. “No, sir; other than they were both paranoids, spouting the usual paranoid stuff.”

  “Tell me about today’s victim, then; what was your impression of him when he came in to be interviewed?”

  “He was nervous, sir. He asked if he could smoke, and when I told him it wasn’t allowed, he held an unlit cigarette in his hands. He told me the government was poisoning inoculations, and that’s why the immigrant children were killed, a couple of years back.”

  “Did he seem romantically interested, also?”

  Munoz seemed surprised at the question. “No, sir. Mainly, he seemed nervous.”

  They were interrupted when the concierge buzzed, and then Reynolds announced that Mary-the-nanny was coming up. Doyle rose to greet them at the door and promptly pulled baby Edward from her arms. “Let me hold him for just a minute, Mary—I’ve missed the boyo.”

  She then sat again at the table, the baby in her lap, and could feel Acton’s wave of relief, as he reached—as though he couldn’t help himself—to touch the baby’s foot.

  Poor man, she thought; he can’t go on much longer like this, and so I’ve got to do what needs to be done—shame on me, for being such a coward.

  Acton shifted his gaze to Munoz. “Did you ask today’s victim why he’d waited so long to tell you about his suspicions?”

  “I did, sir,” said Munoz, who seemed relieved that she’d done something right. “He told me he’d only just realized it recently.”

  And why would that be? thought Doyle with some puzzlement, and waited for the next question, but it never came.

  Acton nodded in a dismissive fashion. “That is all for now; Sergeant. I no longer believe there an immediate danger to you. However, it would not hurt to be extra-cautious, and as I mentioned, keep another officer with you when you are out in the field.”

  “Yes, sir.” Doyle knew that Munoz’s puzzlement matched her own—so; it hadn’t been an ambush, after all?

  Acton continued, “As you were the responding officer, please prepare a report of your observations. Williams is the SIO, and he will sign off.” He paused. “Stay with the facts, please, and present no working theories, pending the forensics results.”

  “Do I mention your presence as an officer-on-site, sir?”

  “By all means,” he replied.

  After Reynolds saw Munoz out the door, Acton rose to stand by the windows, looking out over the scene below with his arms crossed, and deep in thought.

  Alive with curiosity, Doyle carried the baby over to stand beside him, and, as her husband made no comment, she ventured, “I wanted you to ask her about the first kook because I had one of my feelin’s about it, but I’m not sure why—it doesn’t sound as though the two kooks were connected in any way. Mayhap you should have Nazy pull up the first kook’s report, just to take a gander?”

  “No,” he said, and absently raised a hand to draw it over the baby’s head. “There is no need, and such a move would only stir up alarm; I do not wish to give the game away.”

  Almost apologetically, Doyle ventured, “From where I’m standin’, the game doesn’t make much sense. Why were the coppers all on-end, and what has any of this to do with Munoz? Nothin’ seems to add up.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I think it very clear, what has happened here.”

  Chapter 8

  He’d set up the next drop, and hope he didn’t get killed in the meantime.

  Doyle waited a few beats, and then—when her exasperating spouse offered nothing further—she prodded, “I’m thick as a plank, then. Can you give me a glimpse, husband?”

  He uncrossed his arms, and took the baby from her, having to untangle Edward’s hands from Doyle’s hair in the process. “We know the scene was staged—the body was frozen and transported. But it was not staged very well; note that there were no drugs in evidence for a supposed drug overdose. Note also the victim was a heavy smoker, but there was no indication of it at the flat.”

  Much struck, she thought this over, leaning to kiss Edward’s forehead as the baby took this opportunity to seize her hair yet again. “We have amateur scene-stagers, then? Or else they didn’t think we’d look very hard in the first place.”

  Acton began gently bouncing the baby, as he continued to contemplate the scene below them. “I would not be at all surprised if Munoz was to have been shot in the stairwell, and then the scene staged to indicate the kook had first shot her, and then had retreated to the flat to shoot himself.”

  Completely taken aback, Doyle stared at him in horror. “Holy Mother, Michael.”

  “Indeed,” he said, and continued bouncing the baby.

  “But why? For heaven’s sake, Michael—what was the point? Someone wanted to kill
Munoz, and so they staged-up this misdirection murder?”

  Acton tilted his head slightly. “I believe it would have been more along the lines of a containment murder.”

  Doyle frowned in surprise—a containment murder contained a scandal, which seemed off-topic, given the facts on the ground. Unless the scandal to be contained was the kook’s theory—

  Thoroughly shocked, she exclaimed, “Tell me—holy saints and angels, Michael; tell me you’re not goin’ to seriously say that the government is tryin’ to poison children with inoculations.”

  “No; of course not.”

  “Then—then what was bein’ contained?”

  There was a small pause, whilst she could see that he debated what to tell her.

  Impatiently, she rescued another strand of her hair from Edward’s fist. “And how would Munoz’s murder help what-ever-it-is to stay contained—Munoz herself has no clue what’s goin’ on; that much is clear. Unsnabble, husband.”

  He took a long breath, his chest rising and falling as he held the baby to it. “Not as yet, I’m afraid; I first need to think it through.” He then closed his eyes, briefly.

  Despite her frustration, Doyle recognized when she needed to be wife-before-detective, and immediately switched hats. “Right then; we’ve had a day, haven’t we? Shall we try a quick nap?” They’d some success, yesterday, where if Doyle sat on the bedroom chair and held the baby in her lap, Acton was able to sleep undisturbed.

  He looked at his watch. “An hour, perhaps. I’ve a full schedule this afternoon.”

  As they turned to retreat into the bedroom, Doyle took the opportunity to venture, “Mayhap we should go to Trestles, over the weekend. I think you’ll sleep better, there.” Trestles was Acton’s hereditary estate and he was very fond of the place, which was not a surprise; it was massive, and peaceful, and very much stuck in a long-ago century.

  He was silent, because he was under the unfortunate impression that Doyle didn’t like to go to visit Trestles very much—that unfortunate impression being entirely accurate.

  “Come on; we should go,” she insisted. “Edward’s goin’ to be wantin’ to climb the trees soon, and so we have to take an inventory of which ones are fort-worthy.”

  He warned, “My mother is in residence.”

  Doyle made a wry mouth. “Then we’ll get her to go climb a tree or two, herself.” The dowager Lady Acton was a thoroughly unpleasant woman who hated her Irish daughter-in-law with the heat of a thousand suns. Fortunately, she’d been relegated to the Dower House, located on the estate, and therefore didn’t darken the doors of the main house unless she was invited.

  But, as always, Acton cut to the nub. “You have no need to worry about me, Kathleen.”

  “Whist—not worried at all,” she advised him stoutly, as she steered him toward the bed. “You’re havin’ an adjustment period, is all. I had nine months, and now you’re just catchin’ up. This whole havin’ babies business is not for the faint-of-heart.”

  She could sense his relief. “I will make the arrangements for a visit, then.”

  Doyle settled into the chair by the fireplace, giving Edward his bottle and hoping that he’d stay quiet so that his poor, ragged da could catch a wink. Acton undressed and slid into the bed without comment—she could see that he’d lost some more weight, and felt a sudden wave of uncertainty that was very unlike her. She was an instinctive being—always trusting her own, finely-honed instincts—but even her usually-reliable instincts were stymied by the current situation. That Acton was a complicated man was a given, but in the past, she’d always gone forward with the sure knowledge that she could help him beat back his demons.

  But now this—this wretched situation had proved to be an unlooked-for misery-mire, and she was at a loss. She’d a sneaking suspicion that he was pinning his own childhood traumas onto his son—which would explain his constant worrying about the baby’s well-being—and so she was trying to be as upbeat and cheerful as she was able, which was a crackin’ hardship, because babies were an exhausting pain-in-the-neck, sometimes.

  And—and there was another thing; she found that she was very uneasy about the developments today, with her formidable instinct prodding her to pay close attention. When Acton had first told her that he thought Munoz was in danger, it had been true, but—after he’d debriefed the girl—apparently, such was no longer the case. It was not clear what had changed; to Doyle’s way of thinking, Acton questions had only made the situation seem even more grave. She hoped he wasn’t overlooking something significant in his exhausted state, and wished she felt more confident.

  For a moment, an uncomfortable thought entered her mind—there were definite parallels between the paranoid kooks and her own paranoid husband, who couldn’t sleep because he was afraid that baby Edward was at risk, somehow. Faith, it wouldn’t be out-of-line to say that Acton was somewhat of a kook, himself.

  Don’t think about that, she decided abruptly. Instead, she thought about this strange case, and how someone had wanted to kill Munoz for something she didn’t even understand. More than one someone, it seemed, since someone working alone would have a hard time freezing and transporting a body in a blanket.

  Was it the coppers? Horrifying to even think about it—coppers were a fiercely loyal bunch; it was hard to even imagine a situation where her fellow coppers would be setting up an ambush for Munoz. It was clear that the two knew something, but it was hard for her to believe that they were the perpetrators.

  So; who was behind this elaborate ambush-plan, and why wouldn’t Acton just tell her?

  That it was all connected to the kook-fest seemed obvious; for some reason, the kook’s killer—who presumably was hoping to kill Munoz, too—was worried about the crazy theories the kooks were telling Munoz.

  It made little sense, though; there’d been one kook who claimed to have murdered a policeman at a public site—despite the fact there were no such deaths on record—and then there was a second kook who claimed the government was poisoning poor children, a theory that had a recurring role in the kook population, whether the subject was inoculations, or additives, or chemicals in the water.

  Which led to another pertinent point; Munoz was nobody’s fool, but Munoz hadn’t been alarmed by either of these two kooks, and had dismissed it all as sheer nonsense. Obviously— with hindsight—Munoz had been proved wrong, since no one would go to the trouble of freezing a kook’s body and staging a murder scene if it was all sheer nonsense.

  There was a purpose to this, and unless Doyle very much missed her guess, the two police officers who’d been stationed on the perimeter knew exactly what that purpose was. And Acton knew, too, but Acton didn’t want to talk about it—not with them, and not even with the wife of his bosom.

  Her gaze rested on her sleeping husband and she felt a pang, because his dark eyelashes seemed to show more prominently, against the paleness of his cheek. I’ll be at headquarters tomorrow, she thought; whilst I’m there, I’ll do a bit of nosing around, and see what there is to see. Acton may need a bit of help, just now—he’s definitely not up-to-speed, and dire events seem to be unfolding at an alarming pace.

  Carefully, she shifted her hip to a more comfortable position without waking the baby. We’ll figure you out, husband, she thought, as she sat in the silence with her sleeping family. We haven’t come this far to give up now.

  Chapter 9

  He put the list together on his old Corolla typewriter at home—he’d take no chances.

  The next morning, Munoz paused by Doyle’s cubicle to lean on the partition, coffee cup in hand. “I’ve been assigned a babysitter,” the other girl complained. “And I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “What’s happened, then?” Doyle hoped that whatever-it-was, it was short—she’d been about to commence her nosing-about campaign by wandering over to the executive building so as to sweet-talk Acton’s new assistant.

  “They’ve assigned me a MAO, starting today.”

  A M
utual Aid Officer was a policeman on temporary loan from a different jurisdiction; oftentimes it was an outreach program, so that the two departments could compare strategies and successes, but sometimes—as had been the case lately—the MAO was simply called in as an extra hand; someone with experience who could be of immediate help and didn’t require any training. The Met was still recovering from the scandal that had seen many of the senior personnel go to prison, and—as the villains didn’t much care about staffing problems at the Met—those detectives who’d survived the purge were swamped.

  As Doyle had passed another miserable night, she was in no mood—not to mention that it would have been nice if someone had assigned her an MAO, for the love o’ Mike. Although to be fair, it would be hard to make such a request straight out-of-the-gate from maternity leave.

  “Well, if it’s for your protection, Munoz, you should be grateful—I’d be hidin’ under my desk, if I thought someone was out to get me.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” the girl replied in a sour tone. “You’ve got two commendations.”

  Doyle had been awarded two medals for bravery—one of which was for jumping off a bridge to rescue Munoz from certain death, which was quite the sore point. “I’d want to survive so as to get a third,” Doyle countered.

  Making an annoyed sound, Munoz sipped her coffee. “If you get a third commendation, I’m throwing it all in, Doyle, because there’d be no justice in the world.”

  “You could go be a PI, instead.” Doyle suggested helpfully. “A private investigator-artist—I’ll bet there aren’t many out there, so you’d have your own little niche.” Munoz was a gifted artist, but she kept it under-the-radar because she tended to paint religious subjects, and this would put paid to her reputation as an unprincipled brasser.

  To her surprise, Doyle caught a flare of strong emotion from the other girl, and decided that it must be connected to the mention of her artwork. After debating whether she wanted to get into it, Doyle decided that she may as well be nice—Munoz had just survived a near-death experience, after all, which made two, if one were counting. “How goes the art-makin’? Weren’t you takin’ some paintin’ classes, on the sly?”