The Murder Book

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  “Get off me! Get off me!” Lindsey grappled with her younger sister on the carpet while Watson jumped up and down, barking in approval. Lindsey’s and Erin’s favorite mode of greeting was still Roman-Greco style wrestling. Rolling around, Lauren’s mind flashed to them at eleven and twelve, each trying to overpower the other. Lindsey was stronger, but Erin was quicker. Their bouts almost always ended in a draw. Lauren knew they’d outgrow it soon, but she hoped not too soon, not just yet.

  “What’s all the racket?” Reese stuck his head in the living room. With the rain imminent, he and Lauren’s father had been trying to fix the gutter on the back of the house all morning. Giving up and coming inside, a wet leaf was stuck to the side of Reese’s navy-blue baseball cap. Mr. Healy, equally rain-spattered, wandered into the living room after him.

  “I’m here!” Lindsey announced from the floor, where Watson was energetically licking her face. “Me and Watson.”

  Lauren reached down, scooping up the Westie. “That’s enough, Watson.” He turned his attention to Lauren’s cheek and commenced licking her full-force. She looked around her living room, suddenly overcome with gratitude for the people she loved.

  I am thankful to be here, she thought, handing the dog over to her dad, really and truly and utterly thankful. It only took a knife to the lung and a kick in the head to appreciate it.

  22

  It was dark outside when the doorbell rang the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Because of their extended stays when she was in the hospital, both her girls and her parents had left Saturday during the day. The four days of chaos of having her family staying with her had been wonderful but exhausting for Lauren. She had gone to bed well before midnight, ready to sleep in Sunday morning, with no physical therapy and no other appointments. She fell asleep looking forward to the empty day that awaited her.

  BONG.

  BONG.

  Watson’s head jerked and he let out a concerned woof, waking Lauren from a deep, dreamless sleep. Lauren sat up, blearily wondering what time it was, if she was hearing things.

  The bell rang again.

  Without bothering to grab a robe, Lauren made her way down the stairs with Watson at her heels. A sleepy-eyed Reese appeared in the hallway in a Bills tee shirt and boxer shorts, his little black Beretta in his right hand.

  Lauren approached the front door from the side. It was solid wood, and Lauren had made the mistake of not putting a peephole in when she had it installed. She could hear rain splattering against the roof in a pounding rhythm. “Who is it?”

  “Lauren, it’s Garcia and Thorenson. Could you open up?” Craig Garcia’s grating voice was unmistakable. What the hell are they doing here? Hesitating for half a second, Lauren twisted the deadbolt and threw open the front door.

  Outside the weather was trying to decide if it wanted to flip into winter mode. The temperature had dropped once the sun went down, and now a freezing rain was coming down in sheets on the two cops standing on her front steps.

  Craig Garcia was wearing the stupid old-fashioned fedora he always sported because he wanted to make himself look like a 1940s flatfoot. It was just another of the many reasons Lauren disliked her fellow Homicide detective. Rain dripped off the brim into her doorway. “We got a situation. You and Reese need to get dressed and come down to headquarters with us.”

  Watson growled. Reese reached down, sweeping him up before the little dog pounced on the two soaked detectives. “What’s going on, guys? It’s five in the morning.”

  Tim Thorenson shook his head, scattering droplets from his thick blonde hair. “We’ll get into it in the car. Can we come in? I’m getting drenched out here.”

  Lauren stepped back, letting them into her hallway. “What happened?” she demanded. Something was very wrong, and she wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what the deal was.

  It was Garcia who answered. “Joe Wheeler is dead. Murdered. And you both need to come downtown with us. Now.”

  23

  Detectives Thorenson and Garcia were kind enough to wait while Lauren changed into a sweatshirt and jeans. Reese pulled on an old pair of sweatpants and put Watson in his crate. As she walked out to Garcia’s car, she noticed Thorenson leaning over, looking into the back-passenger side of Reese’s car. Snapping up when he saw her notice, he walked over and opened his police car door for her. She sat shivering in her seat. The sweatshirt she had just put on was soaked through. Reese slid in next to Lauren without a word, equally drenched from the short walk. The rain ran down the window glass in rivulets as Lauren stared out into the night, the streetlights blurred into foggy halos by the downpour.

  The car stunk like the cheap cologne that Mario Aquino was known for; enough to make her eyes water. He must have had the vehicle before Garcia.

  Garcia and Thorenson got in. Thorenson spoke up first. “Listen—”

  Reese cut him off. “Save it until we get downtown. I can’t hear you over the weather.”

  “Reese, come on.” Thorenson turned in his seat to look at him.

  Reese shook his head. “Downtown.”

  It was a quiet ride to headquarters. The police car was the last place Lauren wanted to talk about what happened to Joe Wheeler. She was glad Reese had stopped the conversation before it started. She didn’t trust Garcia. And she trusted anything he had to say to her even less.

  Days after Lauren had been thinking she should have blown Joe Wheeler’s brains out when she had the chance, she was sitting in her own Homicide office with Chief Bernard Ritz of the Garden Valley Police looking at pictures of Joe Wheeler’s dead body.

  Thorenson and Garcia had separated her and Reese once they got them to Buffalo police headquarters. She was in the big interview room with Tim Thorenson and Chief Ritz, like the cracker, giving a statement about her whereabouts that night.

  Joe Wheeler had been Garden Valley’s only detective, so Lauren wasn’t surprised their chief was handling this personally. She had seen another Garden Valley officer in the Homicide office when they brought her and Reese in, looking pale and shaky. A cop’s death was difficult to deal with on any department. A cop’s murder was devastating.

  The Buffalo brass had called its entire squad in on overtime to assist Garden Valley PD. Lauren pictured half the Homicide squad watching her on one monitor in the viewing room, the other half watching Reese’s interview on the second monitor, their heads bouncing from screen to screen like spectators at a tennis match.

  “Can you give me a detailed account of where you’ve been the last twenty-four hours?” Ritz asked. This wasn’t how Lauren would have started an interview. She would have started with some feeler questions, like How are you doing? Can I get you something to drink? Do you know why you’re here? On the other hand, she supposed Ritz wasn’t going to be looking for any critiques when he was finished.

  “My daughters both left this morning—yesterday morning,” Lauren corrected herself. This morning was currently the one in progress. “We dropped my parents off at the airport around six in the evening. I made a frozen pizza, walked the dog around the block, took my medicine, and went to bed,” she summed up. It was pretty straightforward, she could have answered those questions at her house. But Lauren knew if they wanted her downtown, there was a lot more they wanted to get out of her.

  “What time did you go to bed?” Ritz asked. A muscular man of about fifty-five, he was the type of guy who stood ramrod straight, as if always at attention. His white hair was buzz-cut into a perfect box, his face shaved smooth, not a hint of five o’clock shadow, even though it was literally five o’clock. In the morning, but still. His hazel eyes bored into Lauren’s, as if every word that ever came out of her mouth was bound to be a lie and needed to be questioned. Ritz hadn’t been happy when David Spencer was acquitted of Garden Valley’s only homicide in the last twenty years and even less happy when Lauren had filed charges and lodged a formal complaint against
Joe Wheeler. Now he was outright hostile.

  “I was tired. I was in bed around nine thirty. My pills usually put me out pretty quick.”

  “What time did Shane Reese come to bed?” Ritz asked.

  “I don’t know. Reese sleeps in the guest room downstairs.” She tried not to sound defensive. Ritz didn’t have a clue about her and Reese’s relationship, or lack thereof. She would probably assume they were in a romantic relationship as well, if she were Ritz.

  “You didn’t hear Reese leave?” Thorenson asked. Tim Thorenson was a nice guy with twenty years on the job. He was no ball of fire when it came to homicide investigations; he typically did somewhere around the bare minimum to get by. The captain had paired him with Garcia, who was so abrasive he’d gone through five or six partners by the time Lauren had gotten to Homicide. While Lauren liked Tim personally, she couldn’t stand Craig Garcia and avoided him at work at all costs. She was glad that Garcia was talking with Reese. Thorenson she could at least stomach.

  “I don’t know that Reese left at all. I didn’t hear anything.”

  “He did. At ten thirty. The guard at the gate took down the plate and the time.” Thorenson looked at the notes he had written on a legal pad. “Came back at three thirty-six.”

  Trying not to look shocked, Lauren said nothing. Reese hadn’t mentioned to her that he’d planned to go anywhere last night.

  Chief Ritz tapped a picture on the desk in front of her. It was black-and-white and blurry, from a security camera, and an old one at that. “This was taken by Joe Wheeler’s neighbor across the street. Apparently, the elderly gentleman believed someone was putting trash in his garbage cans so he set up surveillance. One of my uniforms recorded the footage on his cell phone before taking the video tape for evidence. The quality is shit but it gives us the gist of what happened.” Ritz opened up the laptop that had been resting flat on the table. He hit a few keys and flipped it around so she could see the screen. “We printed the stills from this. There’s no sound.”

  A grainy black-and-white video played.

  The camera was trained directly at the two garbage totes on the curb, but Joe Wheeler’s driveway was in full view in the background. She recognized the residence right away from the knotty old tree to the right of the mailbox; it had been Joe’s dad’s house. She remembered going there when they were a couple. Joe must have moved in after his father died.

  For ten seconds the scene was still. The image danced a little, probably from the officer’s shaky hand. Then a dark-colored car pulled into the driveway. From behind, you could make out movement in the vehicle, either Joe gathering up some things or putting them away. The driver’s door opened and Joe stepped out. Almost immediately a figure stepped into the frame from the right. Lauren watched as Joe’s head turned in that direction.

  The figure wore dark clothes, a hood pulled up around his face, with something long in his right hand. A tire iron, Lauren thought. It looks like a tire iron.

  The person closed the distance between them quickly. Joe’s hand went for his waistband and the left hand of the person came up with the iron and brought it crashing down on Joe’s arm. Joe went to his knees, grabbing his forearm, looking up at the attacker.

  As Lauren watched in horror, the assailant rained vicious blows down on his head, even after he was face down on the ground. Even after it was clear he wouldn’t be getting up again.

  In her mind she knew the dull, cracking noise those strikes were making:

  THUNK!

  THUNK!

  THUNK!

  With each contact, Joe’s body convulsed, and even though she couldn’t hear the sound, parts of Lauren’s body jerked in reaction.

  With one last devastating smash to the head, the attacker backed up for a moment, surveying Joe’s lifeless body. With one foot he kicked Joe over, flat on his back. In the grass, a few feet from Joe, was the gun he’d tried to pull from its holster. The attacker looked at the corpse of Joe Wheeler for a second, then turned and walked back the way he’d come, still holding the tire iron as if nothing at all had just happened.

  Joe’s body lay on the concrete, absolutely still. Lauren felt her throat constrict, cutting off the air in the room. Seconds went by, maybe a minute. Still Joe lay there, splayed out, a dark pool spreading around his head.

  Finally, a car came by. It passed Joe’s house, then abruptly stopped and backed up. Two men jumped out and ran up the driveway. Both of them stopped short. The driver, who already had a cell phone in his hand, stood stone still while he dialed. The other man turned away and promptly threw up on the grass.

  Ritz closed the laptop with a snap.

  Lauren looked down. Fanned out in front of her were fifteen black-and-white stills from the neighbor’s camera.

  “That’s a tire iron,” the chief confirmed. “Here Joe Wheeler sees the person and tries to draw his weapon.” He tapped another photo. “Here the assailant smashes the tire iron into Wheeler’s arm, breaking it and sending Wheeler’s gun flying. Here the attacker proceeds to beat my officer to death. The time on the video says it’s one twenty-seven a.m. In case you weren’t counting, Joe took a total of twelve hits. Twelve. The gun was recovered in the grass six feet from his body.”

  Now Ritz pulled a large color 8-by-10 out of a folder on the desk and dropped it in front of Lauren. It was not a grainy black-and-white picture taken from a video. It was a high-resolution crime scene photo that captured the carnage in shocking detail. There was Joe Wheeler, face unrecognizable, head smashed open like a pumpkin, lying on his back in his driveway.

  “Did Shane Reese do this?” Ritz asked.

  She picked up the picture and stared at it. Joe’s right forearm was bent at a grotesque angle, away from his elbow, hand empty and palm up. Blood pooled around the back of what was left of his head, dark and thick-looking on the driveway. His nose, she thought as she tried to keep her hand from shaking, it’s next to his ear.

  “No. Shane Reese did not do that.” Lauren’s voice choked. It was one thing to think about revenge, it was another to see it, guts and all. She felt a wave of nausea pass over her. No matter what Joe Wheeler had done to her in the past, no one deserved to die like that.

  “Joe Wheeler gets his job back and within days, someone takes a tire iron to his head,” the chief said, his shirt white and crisp, even at that early hour. He was on his feet, standing over her as she sat in her chair. “You take a knife to the back and a foot to the head a few weeks ago. What’s the connecting factor here? Shane Reese. I don’t believe in coincidences, do you, Detective?”

  Lauren shook her head. “That would mean Reese stabbed me and stole our Murder Book. He had no reason to do that. That makes no sense.”

  “Unless he wanted to look like a hero. He came back and saved you, then killed your abuser.”

  “Oh, please.” She dropped the photo. Her hand was shaking so badly she stuck it under her leg. “Reese does not have a hero complex. He didn’t stab me, and he didn’t kill Joe Wheeler.”

  “Can you offer me a better explanation?” Ritz was up in her face now, his coffee breath bouncing off her lips. She choked back a gag, craning her head back from his.

  She wanted to repeat what Reese had told her, to tell Ritz that being a cop was dangerous and that not everything was about her. She wanted to tell him that Joe Wheeler, if he was still alive, could probably name ten guys who wanted to see him dead, because he did his job and that was what happened. She wanted to say Reese was her partner, and while she had no doubt he’d take a bullet for her, he would not kill for her. But saying those things wouldn’t help Reese, so she did the smart thing and said nothing at all.

  “How would you feel if another cop knew something about the guy who attacked you and sat here and stonewalled?” Ritz pressed. He was trying to piss her off and he was succeeding. A dull throb began behind her right eye. She knew the game Ritz was playing,
because she played it better than anyone, but to win you had to have the facts on your side. She decided to let Ritz in on a few of the ones she knew.

  “There’s nothing to say.” She tried to keep her voice in check. “Reese didn’t kill Joe. Look.” She grabbed one of the black-and-white photos off the table. “I can tell this is Joe Wheeler, not because of his face, but because I know Joe Wheeler. I know the way he stands and his body posture and the way he moves. I can’t make out his face in this picture, but I know this is him. And this other guy? I know it’s not Reese. Reese is shorter than Joe Wheeler. The attacker is clearly taller than him. And he’s holding the tire iron in his left hand. Reese is a righty. He plays baseball, he bats right. See here?” She pointed to the still shot of the strike to Wheeler’s arm. “That’s a lefty. That’s not Reese.”

  The door to the interview room opened. A tiny, dark-haired woman in a navy-blue pants suit with a wrinkled white blouse stepped in. “Not another word, Lauren.” She turned to Ritz, sticking out her hand. “Amelia Jones-Cortez. I’m the Buffalo Police Union’s lawyer. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Ritz looked down at her outstretched hand, straightened up, but didn’t shake it. “Detective Riley didn’t ask for a lawyer.”

  “It’s too early for me,” she said with a smile to Lauren, stepping in front of Ritz. “Let’s me, you, and Detective Reese go get a coffee. You’re done here.”

  Chief Ritz tried to take back control of the room. “I have a dead police officer—”

  “And this one’s recovering from a murder attempt.” Literally half his size, Amelia turned and faced Ritz. “She’s in no condition to give you any kind of statement. Are you charging Shane Reese with murder?”

  Ritz’s lips mashed together as he towered over the tiny lawyer, whose smile never faltered. “I’ll take that as a no. Then he’s done too. Let’s go, Lauren.” She slipped her arm through Lauren’s, helping her up.