Twist of Fate – A Jack West Novel (Jack West Mystery Book 1)

by Deanna King

  He saw Cassandra Sparrow standing at the front door.

  “Cass, you and Amy were radioed the callout?”

  “Yes, sir, Amy and I rolled up at twelve-fifteen. The housekeeper called it in. She cleans on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She’s in the front room with Amy right now.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “We met her at the door and the poor woman was crying and speaking in Spanish so rapidly we thought she’d hyperventilate. Amy took her statement. She translated while I wrote since I can’t speak a lick of Spanish. Housekeeper arrived at the house at approximately eight-thirty this morning. She always starts downstairs and works her way upstairs. She went upstairs around eleven forty-five and that was when she found the body in the master bedroom.”

  “Took her over three hours to get upstairs?”

  Cass gave him a look. “It’s a big house, Detective West, and she evidently does a thorough job. You’ll see how immaculate it is when you go inside. When she gets upstairs, she always begins in the back, which is the master bedroom, and works her way to the other side. When she went into the master bedroom, she saw clothes all over the place, drawers pulled out and a large jewelry box upturned, and the contents were scattered all over the place. She started picking stuff up, and that’s when she saw the first body.”

  “First body?”

  “Yes. She ran back downstairs, grabbed her cell phone, and dialed 911. We did a sweep then headed upstairs. We saw the woman on the bedroom floor, and Amy checked the bathroom and found the second body, a man. Both were dead. The victims are Mr. and Mrs. Stegwig. The housekeeper gave us a positive ID. No one was to be home when she worked. We searched the rest of the house and didn’t find anything amiss. Just the three rooms were touched, from what we could tell. The master bedroom, the bathroom, and a room across the hall used as an office. The desk ransacked and papers were everywhere making it look like a robbery gone wrong. I don’t see that, and it seems odd to me.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Look at this place, lots of things to steal, maybe the perp hadn’t expected anyone to be home and didn’t have time to complete the job. The dressers were ransacked and the jewelry was dumped all over the floor, but nothing was taken.”

  “And?” he prompted her.

  “In a small cabinet, there were four guns. They weren’t loaded, the clips were full, but none of the clips were in the guns. I find that odd because a thief would have grabbed these first. Guns are in demand, primarily by gangs.”

  “Was any money missing?”

  “Housekeeper informed us that no cash was ever lying around. The cash from the man’s wallet on the nightstand was gone and the woman’s purse dumped out, her cash gone too. It appears to be a murder/suicide, or someone wanted it to look like a robbery. No note was found though, so hard to tell what happened. I guess, Detective West, it would be your job to deduce if it’s a robbery gone sour. CSU is in there now, and the videographer is filming, you know the usual rigmarole; they’ve been at it for less than an hour.”

  “How long has the housekeeper worked here, did she say?”

  “She’s worked for them for eight years. She knows this house inside and out. She’s nervous. I’m sure she is worried that she’ll be implicated.”

  “Did the neighbors hear anything?” He walked around the front of the house and didn’t see the garage; must be a rear entry. On a corner lot and a sprawling lot, meant that no one heard a thing. He’d have the uniforms canvass the area.

  “One neighbor, Ms. McGovern, she lives next door, lots are big, so this isn’t an area with zero lot lines. She’s waiting in a room in the front of the house, and she is pretty shaken up.”

  “Someone go get her, or did she just show up?”

  “She is what you call the neighborhood watchdog, came over here on her own volition, checking it out to see what happened. That was when an officer approached her and then contained her.”

  Lucky walked up to the front door, and Cass half-smiled. Personal feelings about the man aside, this was business, and she conducted herself like a professional.

  “Detective Luck.” Not a trace of dislike at all entered her voice.

  “Officer Sparrow, your callout?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyone home or is it just the vic?”

  “Two vics, Detective Luck, it would appear to be a possible robbery gone sideways. The housekeeper called it in, but no one else is in the house. CSU is sweeping the place right now.”

  “Where are our victims?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Is Bennie on the way?” The medical examiner’s car was nowhere around.

  “He’s on the way. CSU and the videographer are in there. Medical personnel arrived on the scene, but since the vics were both dead, they left as fast as they arrived.”

  “Thanks, Cass. Lucky, let’s get in there and get a look-see for ourselves.” Jack put paper booties over his boots, pulled on his rubber gloves, and walked into the house. Dawson Luck followed suit and walked in behind him.

  Cass was a first-rate patrol cop, smart and keen on details. He was going to keep his eye on her. A future shining star might emerge, and he saw a sparkle in her.

  The house was indeed immaculate. The entryway into the home opened up with double-paned glass doors encased with a swirling design of metal that protected and decorated the doors. The front foyer was adorned with expensive, very elegant Spanish marble tile, high ceilings, and a beautiful chandelier overhead.

  You didn’t just see the money, you “smelled” it in the air. A small antique table sat inside the entrance, a basket filled with Godiva chocolates and fresh flowers in a vase on top. Who still put out fresh flowers, he wondered.

  The staircase was wide and winding; it grabbed your attention right away. The metal staircase handrails were a replica of the metal design on the front door.

  Jack saw a formal living area to his left and a formal dining area to his right. It was all very elegant with sophisticated touches and expensive furniture. He figured the rest of the house was just as impressive.

  “I am going upstairs, Lucky, you go interview the housekeeper then meet me upstairs.”

  “Yep, I’m on it.” Lucky headed to the formal living room, and Jack headed upstairs.

  . . .

  Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Stegwig lay dead, one on the floor of their bedroom, the other on the floor in the bathroom.

  The woman’s body was fully dressed laying on her left side. Her left hand was near her throat, and her right arm draped over her breast. She was wearing an exercise outfit, a yellow T-shirt, and stretchy exercise pants, white socks, and tennis shoes. Her T-shirt was saturated now in dried blood that had pooled under her upper torso. She had taken a bullet to the neck. Her hands were covered in dried blood; she’d grabbed her throat. Jack wondered if she had bled out, or had she drowned in her own blood.

  “Howdy, West,” Loren Taylor called out when he saw Jack.

  “Lord and Taylor, haven’t seen you in a while, too bad we have to meet up like this, huh?”

  He bent over the female murder victim.

  “I know, right?”

  “Who’s here with you?”

  “Cheech is.” Loren snapped a picture of the area behind the dead woman.

  Vince Stoner, the other person from the CSU department, everyone called him “Cheech” as in Cheech and Chong, stoner heads from the seventies. Thankfully, HPD’s Cheech was a straight arrow and the total opposite of a seventies stoner. What a duo. Lord and Taylor, a designer department store nickname, and, Cheech, Stoner Head.

  “The other vic’s in ther
e.” Loren pointed toward another doorway leading into the bathroom.

  “Okay, I’ll go in there in a moment.”

  “Hey, where’s your sidekick, Lucky?”

  “He’s talking to the housekeeper, he’ll be up shortly.”

  Her body had begun the process of bloating, and fluid was leaking from her nose and her mouth. No rank smell yet, it was exceptionally cool in the room, so decomp was slower. He had seen his share of dead bodies and this woman had been dead for over forty-eight hours at least.

  She had some bruising on her right thigh, and from what he could see on her right arm he wondered if there were matching bruises on her left arm. He worked a few domestic violence calls, seen similar bruising on women aggressively grabbed by spouses or boyfriends. Fingerprint powder dusted the place; Loren had already dusted for prints.

  “Get any prints outta here?” He surveyed the room

  “A few, undoubtedly the vic’s prints seeing that this was their room, who knows. The housekeeper runs a tight ship, not a speck of dust anywhere, until today, that is. We’ll get her prints, we can double check hers against the prints we find. We have the man’s wallet, her purse and wallet too, we’ll try to get prints off them, but we’ll have to take that stuff to the lab. To be honest, I’m not hopeful.”

  He walked back where the second decedent lay, Loren right behind him.

  “Not many prints…we found what we could, and we’ll match them to the vic’s and the housekeeper. The room was cleaner than I had expected. It appears that it was all wiped down, that’s why I’m not hopeful about the purse or the wallets. I gotta hunch the perp wiped them down too.”

  His back against the claw-footed bathtub, Marcus Stegwig sat, his body semi-slumped—dead. His face swollen and blood that had once oozed had dried, along with what appeared to be brain matter, splattered on the right side of his face. His arms hung on either side of his body, his eyes lifeless. He was wearing expensive dress slacks and what used to be a light purple shirt. A bullet hole in his right temple, the bullet had exited the left temple and left a very small exit hole, the shot was a straight through and through.

  It for all intents and purposes appeared to be a suicide. He crouched in front of the body. No gun…where in the hell was the gun? No gun…then it can’t be a suicide. Missing cash, it had to be a robbery gone wrong…or was it staged?

  “If it was a real suicide and someone found them, then took the gun…” he mumbled, thinking that was a one percent chance, and he doubted that one-hundred percent.

  “No gun to officially compare it to but it’s a .22 caliber. It’s either an execution or a suicide, if the man was right-handed. See where the casing landed?” Loren pointed out. He looked over his left shoulder, following Loren’s finger.

  A .22-caliber shell casing lay to the right of his body about four feet out next to the toilet, marked with an evidence marker.

  “It had to have bounced and then hit the side of the vanity cabinet then bounced back and rolled, stopping at the bolt that secures the toilet to the floor. Shell casing, but no gun.”

  “Loren, you already said that. No gun, then it couldn’t be a suicide. Obviously, you can’t shoot yourself with a loaded finger.”

  Two victims with bullet holes in them was all the evidence he needed to know that a gun had been there.

  “You find the slugs?”

  “We took one out of that wall next to the doorframe.” Loren pointed at the wall. “Since he was sitting at this end of the tub, that’s about where it would have hit. I am surprised he didn’t keel over, against the wall more slumped over. The slug was barely stuck in the doorjamb. I’m also amazed it was a through and through. A .22 caliber bounces around, it hardly ever exits.”

  The spot was marked as to where the slug had been. He crouched next to the hole and glanced back at the body. The bullet trajectory fit one of two things: he killed himself, or his assailant made him sit against the tub before executing him, and none of it made sense.

  He scooched over and hunkered in front of the body, his back to the vic, and he held his hand up like a gun.

  “If I were to off myself, the casing would eject out to my right, up and then over about four feet, because there is no other way for it to go. It would have bounced, hit the wall, and bounced back this way.”

  He assessed the area before speaking again. “But, say I am the doer, and I sit here, and you are there.”

  He had Loren switch places with him and squat, putting himself on the right, and he knelt next to Loren, pretending to have a gun in his hand holding it to Loren’s temple.

  “I shoot, you fall over toward the left. If I have the gun at your right temple, your lifeless body isn’t going to end up in a straight-up upright position. The body is going to lean over, at least a little. Even if a doer off’d him he would have fallen over some; this vic is sitting too upright. What did the killer do, sit him upright after he shot him or hold his right arm to keep him upright when he shot? The human head is heavy, a shot in the head would make his head snap, would have caused him to be unbalanced and he would have leaned over, at least a little.”

  “That seems reasonable. See the burn marks around the wound. The entry point left a black and gray abrasion ring, gunpowder burns and the impression of the end of the barrel, see.” He pointed with his gloved hand. “A starburst shape indicates the gun was held to his head like so.” Loren held his hand up to his temple as if he were holding a gun on himself, his forefinger touching his temple. “That leads me to believe that whoever shot him had the gun pressed hard at his temple. This is a tight area, GSR would settle everywhere, and the shooter would have the bulk on his hands, or whoever was holding the gun.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The bathroom was small, smaller than a master bathroom would be in such a majestic house. It had one toilet, one sink and countertop that was not lengthy, and the claw-foot tub.

  “This is the master bath?”

  “Hell, no, this must be his bathroom, you know, the man gets the smallest bathroom and closet. On the other side of the room where I thought a closet was, is a larger bathroom. Huge vanity area with all the misses’ makeup and a massive rock shower with twin showerheads, along with enormous walk-in closets, double sinks, and a long countertop that runs the near length of one wall. This shitter must have been his, or the one the wife made him use. Guess he wanted to do himself in here.”

  Jack regarded the body, and what did not fit was how he was sitting. It made no sense either way, suicide or murder. Gunpowder burns were on his temple. The gun was up against his head—on his own volition or not, it was hard to say. If he were a suicide, he would have GSR on his hands, and more than just a little.” He squatted and peered at the bullet entry for a second look-see. Glancing at the dead man’s right hand, he saw blood but not much.

  “If he off’d himself there’d be more blood on his hand. The blood spatter would be here, on the right side of the body. Don’t see spatter where it should be though.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t ya? There’s blood on his hand, but not as much blood spatter as one would imagine.”

  “Did you swab him for GSR?”

  “Sure did, look what I have here.” Loren held up a small plastic case. The label read, Instant Shooter Identification Kit.

  “Nifty, what is it, new toys for CSU?”

  “What’s going on in here?” Lucky walked into the bathroom.

  “Loren was fixing to show me a new toy he has. By the way, you let the housekeeper go?”

  “I have her contact information and told her to call if she thought of anything else. Stoner fingerprinted her before she left.”

  “Great. You can tell me what she
told you later.”

  “Guys, if I can interrupt, let me tell you what I have here,” Loren said as he got into a squat, setting the case next to him.

  They watched as Loren got all CSU’zy with his new toys.

  “It is a binary test kit. You use the sticky tab swab called ‘carbon tape particle collection device.’ First, you get a sample bag and seal it to take to the crime lab, then they can use the SEM-scanning electron microscope test for GSR; that way, they have evidentiary evidence.”

  “I’ve heard about these, when did we start using them?”

  Loren didn’t answer; he was busy with the kit. He guessed that CSU’s must have gotten a budget increase.

  Loren Taylor continued his lesson on how to use the kit. “Now I dry swab his hand like this and use the propriety L.E.T. swab and then use this chemical agent.”

  Loren went through the motions conducting the test. Jack and Luck stared at the swab Loren had sprayed. Five minutes elapsed and a blue reaction on the swab began to appear.

  “See, that blue reaction indicates a presence of nitrocellulose; there are small spots and specks. This means it is highly probable that this man here fired a weapon. Not to mention that his shirt reeks of GSR and there’s no weapon anywhere close, or even in the room. I don’t think he shot himself then went and hid the gun either, do you?”

  Jack knew that was a hundred percent unlikely, so yeah, where was the freaking gun.

  “Was there a note found?”

  “No, we didn’t find one. I wonder if he thought before he killed himself, that no note would be necessary. He does the wife and then he kills himself, for another reason. Let’s say he did kill the wife, and then someone killed him…that could happen, I guess. I can’t see that it was a robbery gone sour.”

  “Why not?” Lucky bent over the male victim.

  “Look at where they live and what they lived in, I mean, you can see their lifestyle and plenty of items to steal. If they surprised the perp, then he killed them, he could have gone about stealing a passel of expensive items. The jewelry alone could have been stuffed in an empty pillowcase.”