The Murder Book

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  A silver Lexus sedan and a black Cadillac SUV sat parked in front of the garage door. She pulled her Ford in behind the Caddy and hit the ignition button. As long as she lived, she would never get used to the keyless entry feature in her car.

  As Lauren made her way up the front walk, she saw one of the blinds move in a window to her right. She had her off-duty Barretta holstered in the small of her back, but she made no reach for it. This was strictly an informal visit, like the one David Spencer paid to her hospital room. Lauren rarely carried a weapon off duty. The gun was just a precaution due to recent events.

  The front door looked more like a porthole to Narnia, with dark wood infused with stained glass and metal. Maybe more Steampunk than Narnia, she decided as her eyes roamed over the front of the house. Someone had definitely mixed their genres in the design.

  Lauren was just about to ring the bell when the enormous door swung inward. “Can I help you?”

  Standing in front of her was a tall, thin redhead who appeared to twinkle. Everything on her sparkled. From the rhinestones bedazzled into her skinny jeans, to the sequins on her low-cut top, right down to a misty shimmer in her dyed red hair. Erin and Lindsey had gone through a sparkles stage when they were thirteen and fourteen, respectively, that had included copious amounts of the shimmering body lotion that this woman seemed to have bathed in. Lauren’s daughters had outgrown the fad; this woman hadn’t gotten the memo it was over yet.

  “Hi,” Lauren said as lightly as she could manage. “Is David Spencer here?”

  The glittering young woman’s green eyes narrowed. “I’m his girlfriend, Melissa.”

  Nothing like staking your claim right off the bat, Lauren thought as she gave Lady Dazzle her best heartwarming smile. “Hi, Melissa.”

  It didn’t melt the ice. “Why do you want to see David?” she asked, looking Lauren up and down.

  “I’m Lauren Riley. I worked on his legal case last year—”

  “Now I know who you are.” She cut Lauren off with a snap of her fingers. “You’re the one who got stabbed.”

  “Is David here?” Lauren asked again, feeling her temper starting to spike. Getting stabbed and drop-kicked in the head had definitely reduced her tolerance for jealous banter from someone covered head to toe in fairy dust.

  “I’m here.” David materialized on the side of Miss Sparkles-a-Lot.

  The first thing that struck Lauren about his appearance was his hair: he’d dyed it blond. He was taller than she remembered, well over six feet. Six-two, if she had to guess. And muscular. He hadn’t lost that prison build he’d gained, only added to it. He looked older than twenty; the little boy sweetness that had pulled her into his case had disappeared.

  Coming around his girlfriend, he eased himself into her place in the doorway, effectively pushing her off to the side. “Melissa, why don’t you put some coffee on? We can sit down in the living room.”

  “I just a need a minute of your time,” Lauren said, not giving him an inch. “I don’t need to come inside.”

  “Okay.” Now he sounded a little uncertain. Turning to his much older girlfriend he asked, “Can you go make me a cup?” Leaning over, he gave Melissa a light kiss on her glossed lips. She softened, nodded, and headed down the hallway, high-heeled shoes clicking the whole way.

  “I’m sorry about Melissa. She has this jealousy thing.” David walked out of the house, closing the door behind him, forcing Lauren back down a step onto the walk. He was wearing a crisp white tee shirt and jeans ripped at the knees but was also barefoot. “She had gastric bypass last year and lost over a hundred pounds, so she’s got some self-esteem issues.”

  “A big mansion like this? A good-looking young boyfriend like you? I’d say she’s doing all right.”

  David crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. Still so handsome, Lauren thought, so convincing.

  “I met Melissa when I was working for Frank after you got me out of jail. She was one of Uncle Frank’s personal injury clients. She got a huge settlement from an amusement park accident. Melissa designed this house herself.”

  That figures. Lauren glanced around the rest of the residence, with its oval windows, almost like portholes, set in castle-like walls and a construction she had no words for sticking up from the left side resembling a midevil tower. Where else would a grown-ass fairy princess live?

  “You still working for Violanti?” she asked.

  “I used to. Not anymore. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

  Lauren ignored the dig. David waited a moment for a reaction that didn’t come, then said, “Melissa’s family is into flipping houses. It’s good money. I manage a lot of their properties for them now.”

  “Why did you come to the hospital?” No use prolonging the conversation with small talk.

  He feigned shock that she would even ask such a question. “I wanted to see you, make sure you were okay. You saved my life, you know? I’d be in prison right now if it wasn’t for you.”

  “You’d be in prison right now because you murdered Katherine Vine.”

  “No.” He shook his finger at her like she had when she warned Watson off from chewing on her couch leg that morning. “I’m innocent. A jury said so. Because you did such a great job on my behalf. I owe my freedom and my life to you.”

  “Cut the act with me. We both know you killed Katherine Vine and Amber Anderson. And I’m here to tell you that a bunch of roses won’t change my opinion of that. Or you playing house with Glinda the Good Witch of the East.”

  His brown eyes looked amused. He was getting to her, and he was getting off on it. “One thing I know about you, Detective Riley,” he countered, leaning forward as though they were conspiring together, “is that if you could prove anything you just said, I’d be in Attica Correctional Facility right now. But here I am, out and free as a bird. All because of you.”

  “You little prick,” she hissed and took a step back.

  “How does your side feel? Where the guy stabbed you? I bet it still hurts. I have to tell you, that’s such a bullshit move, to stab someone in the back when they’re not looking. That’s a coward right there. He should have at least shown you his face.”

  “Because if we’d been face to face, it would have been a fair fight?” she asked incredulously.

  “No, because if you’re going to do something to someone, it doesn’t mean anything if the person doesn’t know who’s responsible. You man up and show yourself.”

  “That’s a really sick and twisted thought, even for you, David.”

  His smile was dazzling. “You have no clue.”

  Talking as she turned to leave, she told him, “Don’t contact me again.”

  “Speaking of contact, Detective Riley, you didn’t happen to get my new address by illegally abusing your position at the police department and running my name without probable cause?”

  She turned on her heel, facing him again as Melissa put a cup of steaming coffee into his hand. “Heavens, no. You should know, better than anyone, that you can find out just about anything on anybody using the plain old Internet. Especially an address.”

  “That’s good. I should write that down. I think I’ll use that line sometime,” he called as she walked to her car. “It was great to see you again, Lauren. I hope they catch the guy who hurt you. He deserves anything he gets.”

  Asshole, she thought, as she poked hard at the ignition button with her finger, causing a new round of pain to flare up her back and side.

  14

  Seething the whole ride home, Lauren tried the breathing methods her therapist had taught her. Physical and occupational therapy were supposed to take up her mornings twice a week. It would have been more, but she had flat-out refused. In more pain after she left than when she went in, Lauren figured she was better off doing things her way. Unfortunately, the department’s doctor disagreed an
d refused to let her go back to work until both of the therapists cleared her.

  She hadn’t even made it through her front door before her cell began buzzing in her pocket. Glancing at the name, she wasn’t surprised. Who else would David have called after a visit from her?

  “What’s up, Violanti?”

  “You tell me. I see on the news you got shanked at work and now you’re out in Clarence harassing my client.”

  Frank Violanti had been the defense attorney who convinced her to work on David Spencer’s case. Short, abrasive, and extremely effective in the courtroom, Violanti had pulled off the upset of the decade getting David acquitted of murder last year. She had told Violanti after the trial she would never stop trying to put David back in jail. Probably a bad move on her part, but it seemed necessary at the time, to let him know she was determined to atone for her mistakes.

  “It wasn’t harassment.” She bent to give an adoring, excited Watson a pet on the head so he wouldn’t start barking. “It was a friendly drop by to say thank you for the lovely flowers he brought me in the hospital.”

  Pausing to digest that for a second, Frank Violanti continued with a more subdued tone. “He visited you in the hospital?”

  “Yes, but don’t fret. He didn’t get in to see me and he is not a suspect in my attack. So you may rest easy that David’s psychotic tendencies are focused elsewhere right now. Maybe on his shiny older girlfriend?”

  “I know, I know.” He sighed into the phone. “Melissa St. John is a couple sandwiches short of a picnic lunch and David somehow latched on to her. It may make him a manipulative leech but not a murderer.”

  “If you say so, Counselor. I have to let you go now. I have healing things to do.” She set herself down on her living room sofa, the exhaustion of the excursion beginning to kick in. Watson crawled up and laid his head dutifully in her lap.

  “Listen, just stay away from David, Lauren. He didn’t go away to the SUNY college like he’d planned, but he is taking their online classes, for criminal justice. And he’s acing them. At the rate he’s going he’ll have his degree in a year.”

  “What a sad commentary on higher education in New York State.”

  “I get it, Lauren. I do. We aren’t on the same page, and I respect that, but David is smart. Like documenting with me that you came to his house today.”

  “You think he’d hurt me?” she asked bluntly.

  “Physically? No. He likes you, which may be worse. Just stay clear of him and call me if anything like the hospital ever happens again.”

  “All right. If he shows up on my doorstep, you’ll be my first call. Or second call.”

  He paused, picking his next words carefully. “How are you doing? Are there any leads on who attacked you?”

  Looking over at the pile of stills from the file room’s surveillance camera scattered across her dining room table, she frowned into the phone. “They’re working on it.”

  “If there’s anything I can do …”

  “Yeah. No. That won’t be necessary. I’ll be back to Cold Case soon, same as I ever was. Thanks for the call.”

  “Lauren, I just meant—”

  “Thanks, Frank.” She clicked and ended the call. The last thing she wanted was a sentimental talk with Frank Violanti. Working with him on David’s case, they had developed a mutual respect for each other, dangerously bordering on friendship. All that was smashed when Lauren realized that David had conned them both and yet Violanti still defended him.

  Resting her head against the back of the sofa, gently stroking the fur between Watson’s ears, she allowed herself to pass out and didn’t wake up until Reese came home from work, six hours later.

  15

  “Hi, honey, I’m home. How was your day?” Reese called, waking her. Lounging on the sofa with her clothes sweaty and wrinkled, Lauren watched Watson launch himself at Reese the moment he walked through the door.

  The little dog was so excited, he knocked Reese’s baseball cap off. Knowing Watson wouldn’t be content unless he received maximum attention, Reese scooped him up and carried him into the living room. “I see you had another productive day.”

  “Sorry there’s no dinner on the table tonight. I got a little busy with this whole letting myself heal thing.”

  “No worries. I brought you a present, though. To get the little gray cells working again.” He plopped a manila folder in danger of bursting onto her coffee table. “Here’s all the copies of reports that matter in your case right now. I figure you don’t need to see every random piece of paper in the file.”

  “But I will.” She bent forward, fanning the paperwork in front of her.

  “I know, but this is a start. Nobody knows what happened to you better than you.” He put Watson down and sat next to Lauren, pointing out various documents. “They did a camera canvass. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where all the city cameras are located because the administration sends an updated list to the districts and squads every month.”

  He pulled an aerial photo from the stack, probably taken from the sheriff department’s helicopter, which showed headquarters bounded on the east by Franklin Street, on the north by Church Street, and on the west by a tiny building belonging to the Diocese of Buffalo. It also showed the commercial parking lot behind headquarters and the entrance to the Skyway bridge. Reese tapped a spot behind St. Joseph Cathedral, the seat of the Diocese in Buffalo and Police Headquarters’ majestic neighbor immediately to the south on Franklin Street.

  “We think whoever did this probably slipped out the Church Street side, cut through the empty parking lot, and had his car parked here under the entrance to the Skyway.” The spot he showed her was considered a plum parking spot for headquarters. Seven or eight vehicles could squeeze under that no-man’s land beneath the elevated portion of Route 5 that ran from the Pennsylvania state line right into downtown. Neither a personal vehicle nor a cop car would stand out; either could be found wedged under the concrete overpass at any given time. “From there he could have cut down any of these little side streets, hopped on South Park Avenue here, or jumped on the thruway here.”

  “No cameras in the parking lot?” she asked hopefully.

  “Nope. I guess having a commercial lot directly next to police headquarters would cut down on people breaking into cars. Besides, it’s entirely sold out to monthly parking permit holders and locked on Fridays by six. Which means you can’t get in, but you can still get out if you parked earlier in the day. It’s only open on the weekends if there’s an event at the arena, like a Sabres game or a concert, which there wasn’t. We checked all the permit holders, and none of them were cheap-ass cops.”

  “Which doesn’t mean a cop’s girlfriend or brother-in-law doesn’t have a permit there.”

  “It’s a possibility, for sure. We’re not ruling it out. Whether he parked in the lot or under the Skyway, he made sure to avoid every camera.”

  She let that sink in for a moment. “Whoever it was did his homework.”

  “Looks like it. Maybe he even saw me turn the office light out.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She hadn’t been sitting in the dark very long before she heard the door open.

  “He could have seen it from the street outside, or from the inside.”

  “Which would mean he would have been watching our window from the other side of the building across the courtyard,” she pointed out. “That would explain how he showed up so quickly after you left.”

  The courtyard was actually the roof of the basement, surrounded on four sides by the walls that made up headquarters. If someone wanted to, they could crawl out a first-floor window and walk around the debris and weed-filled area; Lauren had seen maintenance do that on occasion. For a while, when she first got to Cold Case and found herself staring out into that depressing void, she had the urge to throw sunflower seeds out her window, to
see if they’d grow. She never did it, but she kept tabs on a small tree in the west corner that was now a good three feet high.

  “He could have been waiting on any of the floors if he was already in the building. In one of the empty offices.” With the impending move, the powers that be had already packed away a lot of the administrative offices and left them vacant. Up to half the building was probably unused at this point.

  “He sees the light go off, swipes in to try to get into the file room, can’t, and heads into Cold Case,” Reese summarized.

  “Where he sees me typing in the dark and tries to kill me,” Lauren finished up. “And you have no leads.”

  “Ah, ah, ah, my doubting friend.” Reese waved a yellow piece of paper with his telltale scribble on it in front of her face. “I got a phone call an hour ago from Carl Church. If you’re feeling up to it, he’d like to meet with you, me, Joy, and Ben tomorrow. He thinks he may have something.”

  “Carl Church, the Erie County District Attorney who hates my guts, may have a lead in my stabbing?”

  “I haven’t heard anyone say ‘hates my guts’ since third grade,” Reese said. “And he only dislikes you because you beat him in the Katherine Vine murder trial and got an acquittal.”

  “Which I shouldn’t have done.”

  “Take off your hair shirt for a second and focus.”

  “Tomorrow is the day before Thanksgiving. Erin and my parents are coming in. Lindsey will be here first thing Thursday morning—”

  Annoyed, Reese cut her off. “He says he may have information regarding your case. Do you think you’ll be able to put the bon bons down, turn off The View, and come and hear what the man has to say tomorrow at eleven?”

  It would mean she’d have to miss physical therapy. “Yes, sir. I’d love to hear what Mr. Church has to say.”