by CJ Lyons
He added those to his mental list of assignments for his team. “Was there a card with the flowers? Anything to say who sent them?”
“I guess maybe they were from Ian after all. The card said to expect a surprise when I got home—he said almost that exact same thing yesterday morning before he left and again when we talked on the phone. Maybe after our call, he knew I was having a bad day, so he ordered them from the gift shop? Just to give me a smile before I came home?” Her gaze drifted away, not focused on anything. “That’s definitely something Ian would do.”
They stood in silence, the glow of the call button as soft as candlelight. Luka felt a knot forming beneath his breastbone. He’d done the same for Cherise, buying bunches of bright blooms on “ordinary days” just for the chance to make her smile. He wished now that he’d realized exactly how extraordinary those days had been, each a snapshot of memory to be cherished now that she was gone.
He cleared his throat, bringing them both back to the task at hand. “Do you know what time the flowers arrived?”
“No.” Her gaze cleared as she focused on his question. “I didn’t see them until I was leaving for the night at the end of my shift.”
“When you spoke on the phone, did Ian mention anything about his day? Meetings he had, maybe a phone call or someone came to the house? Maybe he was expecting someone?”
Creases dug into her brow as she thought. “No, nothing. We’d never invite anyone over, not that late at night.” Married life, Luka thought. Where anything after eight p.m. was considered late. “After putting Emily to bed, he usually cleans up, reads, maybe works up in his office—he tries to wait up for me, but since we never know when I’ll be home, half the time he falls asleep, reading in bed.”
She glanced at him, that hopeful expression witnesses always got, wanting approval, some indication that what they said was actually helpful. Problem was, Luka never knew what exactly would turn out to be helpful, especially at this early stage. Right now, he was collecting information, following facts to see where they led—more often than not, it would be right smack into a dead end, but then he’d grab another thread of the timeline and follow that. The key to closing cases, he’d found, wasn’t any flashy shootout or chase scene like in the movies. It was more about getting people to talk and then paying attention to what they said.
“Mrs. Wright.” He purposefully avoided her professional title, wanted her thinking of her husband, her home. “Do you have any idea who might have done this? Any inkling at all—maybe someone watching the house too closely or possibly taking photos? A strange hang-up on the phone? Anything unusual at all in your lives lately?”
Her jaw clenched even as she nodded her understanding. And kept on nodding, lost in the image he’d conjured, her gaze distant as she considered. “No. No. Nothing.”
Two denials more than he needed. He pressed her to be certain. “Maybe not something strange or out of the ordinary. Maybe not an overt threat, just an uneasy feeling. Maybe about someone you or Ian knew? Someone who’d want him—”
“No.” The word exploded from her before he could finish. She flinched at the hollow thud of her own voice as it struck the tiles surrounding them, then stepped toward the door, watching her daughter anxiously. The little girl didn’t stir.
“No,” she said firmly but quietly as if she hadn’t already answered his questions. “There’s no one who’d ever want to hurt Ian.”
Luka stood silent, giving her time to fill the void, but she said nothing, didn’t even glance in his direction. Her shoulders slumped as if she were surrendering and she hugged herself. Now came the hard part. Over the next few days Leah would be telling this story many times, but Luka needed to be the first to hear it, naked and unadorned by any outside influences.
“And then you finished work and drove home,” he prompted her, breaking the spell, her gaze darting around the tiny room, avoiding his face, finally settling upon her daughter once more.
“And then I drove home,” she echoed, her voice remote.
Luka held still as she walked him through the discovery of her husband’s body, stifling his breathing so as not to distract her. She was a good narrator, able to distance herself from most of the emotional distress—although he saw it in her face, she didn’t flinch away from painful details—and she was an excellent observer. He knew a few fellow police officers who could learn from Leah.
And then she finished. He went back to review a few points—more for the recording to document her lack of uncertainty and the accuracy of her recollection.
Finally, they were back where they began: silence.
Until she asked the question he had no real answer for—he had details, advice, phone numbers, a tentative timeline, but not the answer she really needed. And that lack troubled him because he wished more than anything that he could provide the solace she sought.
“What do we do now?” Leah asked, her gaze fixed on her daughter’s sleeping form as if the rest of the universe had ceased to exist.
Six
Before he left Good Sam, Luka swung downstairs, hoping the news of Ian’s murder might loosen some lips in the ER. The desk clerk confirmed Leah’s time of departure as well as her story about the roses.
“No idea who sent them?” Luka asked the clerk, a man in his thirties whose arms were covered with tattoos—not jailhouse art, but sophisticated well-designed graphics that reminded Luka of Japanese anime.
“Nope. The gift shop closes at seven but there’s an area with vending machines. Has flowers, balloons, other odds and ends.” The timing fit with the roses being bought from the vending area, not a gift shop clerk he could interview. Luka made a note to check out any CCTV near the shop before leaving Good Sam.
“You work much with Dr. Wright?” Luka leaned against the counter, reflecting the clerk’s own casual posture. “What’s she like?”
“All the ER docs do nights,” he answered. “Leah’s the newest. Took her awhile to find her footing—she’s used to big time trauma centers, teaching hospitals where you can always call for help when things get too crazy. Once she asked for a derm consult on a Saturday night.” He shook his head at the outrageous idea.
“But you guys are a teaching center, you have residents here.” Luka had suffered through the multiple interrogations of several interns when he’d brought Pops in when his diabetes was first diagnosed.
“Residents from the Penn State and Temple programs rotate through here to see what life’s like in a real hospital, away from the academic centers. We’re only a level three trauma center—but they brought Dr. Toussaint in to change that, move us up to level two. That way we can keep more patients here and get more referrals—more money for the hospital.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “That’s why he was so pissed at Leah when we had to close to trauma because of one of her patients. Kid was DOA, but she brought him back, tying up our last ICU bed.”
“Which means you have to turn potential patients away?” Luka translated.
The clerk nodded. “Plus, the kid Leah saved was one the cops brought in. Turns out he was trying to rape a girl. Seems to me, guy like that, maybe he got what he deserved, you know? And who knows who we could have saved if we weren’t closed to trauma? Already my shift, they’ve had to send two car accidents to Hershey instead of keeping them here.”
Luka made a mental note. Technically the assault case was one of Luka’s, but not one he had to worry about since the DA wasn’t going to press charges against the bystander who’d intervened, making it an easy close.
He thanked the clerk and moved through the ER, talking to Leah’s other co-workers. Their opinions were divided. The nurses and medics seemed to admire her, respect her abilities. Her fellow ER physicians voiced support, deemed her above average in competence—given that they seemed a rather competitive lot and Leah was the youngest member of their ranks, Luka decided this was probably a compliment. But the trauma staff who’d handled her DOA case uniformly damned her as arrogant a
nd overstepping her bounds. Interest piqued, Luka made a note to interview the surgeon involved later, after he’d cleared higher priority items from his burgeoning to-do list.
He did take time to swing by the gift shop, confirming what the clerk had told him about the vending area, and noting a camera that might possibly tell them who sent the roses. Leah had called her husband after eight o’clock and the gift shop closed at seven. If Ian Wright ordered the roses before his call with Leah, then the gift shop should have a record. If he decided to send them after their phone call, as Leah had suggested, he must have called someone to pick them up from the vending area for him. And, if Ian Wright hadn’t sent the roses, who had?
The flowers kept niggling at him as he drove back to the crime scene. It was four-fifty, the night at its bleakest, but he smiled as he pulled up to the curb a house down from the Wright residence. Other than the CSU van, a lone patrol car, and Harper’s unmarked, all the vehicles had departed as had the press and the other residents. There was a scattering of lights shining up and down the block—whether they reflected an inability to sleep or a newfound need for increased security, he wasn’t sure. Probably both. A crime this extreme and violent would impact the entire neighborhood whether people knew Ian Wright or not.
What made him smile, though, was that his timing had been perfect—he’d missed Ahearn and the other brass along with the media circus. Ahearn loved to insert himself into high profile investigations, and Luka had learned with experience it was better to avoid the Commander altogether. Otherwise he’d find himself and his team following Ahearn’s priorities—which somehow always seemed to focus on anything press-worthy—rather than their own leads.
His smile was cut short as soon as he crossed the yellow crime scene tape and climbed the steps to the Wrights’ front porch. Leah Wright’s shattered expression as she described crawling over her husband’s body to save her daughter haunted him.
He found Harper in the attic where Ian had his office. “Anything?”
“CSU just cleared it, so only just got up here myself,” she answered. “Geek squad took all the electronics, so there might not be much left to find.”
Luka stood at the top of the stairs and observed the room. It was an interesting space with its exposed brick walls, beamed ceiling that followed the pitch of the roof, and two octagonal windows that in daylight would expose sweeping views of the city. One corner had a thick play mat and held a child-sized easel, desk, chair, and an assortment of wooden brain-teaser puzzles. Between the two windows sat a large workstation that must have been assembled inside the room given the steep and narrow steps leading up to the attic. Empty space and dangling cables on both desks made the father and daughter workstations appear abandoned.
On either side of the larger desk were similarly inexpensive, utilitarian bookcases overflowing with a hodgepodge of titles ranging from histories of Russia, China, and India to fat, heavy art books, to biographies of composers and World War Two codebreakers, to poetry and kids’ books, including every Dr. Seuss book ever written.
“You can learn a lot about a person—and his family—even without access to their emails, texts, and files,” he told Harper. He crouched before the bookcase, his fingers caressing the volumes of poetry. The classics, of course, Tennyson, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot among others, but also a few that mirrored Luka’s own collection. Robert Hayden, Chinua Achebe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rita Dove.
“Well, so far all I’ve learned from rummaging through their kitchen is that they like Thai carryout and delivery pizza and that they’re out of eggs and fabric softener.” She turned to the small child’s desk, eyeing the tiny chair with mistrust, then lowered herself to sit on the floor. “There’s not much of a paper trail at all—I think, given Wright’s job, these guys lived their lives online. I couldn’t even find a paper checkbook downstairs much less a bank statement.” She paused. “If Ian Wright was targeted and this wasn’t a random home invasion, what kind of person could do that? With a kid right there in the house? And why leave the kid alive?”
Her questions paralleled Luka’s own. “What do you think?”
She fiddled with one of the puzzles, considering her answer. “I think the violence is all for show. This was carefully planned—no, that’s not the word. Orchestrated. But what I can’t figure out is why. I’ve come up with two things. Someone was after his government work. Except, then, why leave the computers behind and why leave a witness alive? If you’re that cold-blooded, why not a quick, simple bullet to the head for both Wright and his daughter? Then trash the place, make it look like a robbery.”
Luka agreed it was a possibility. “And your second idea?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Go ahead. This early on, no idea is out of bounds.”
She carefully placed the toy back where she’d found it. “The only person who would care if the daughter lived is her mother.”
Luka was a bit taken back. Of course Leah was on his list of suspects, but he hadn’t really given her that much serious consideration. But Harper had a point—a good point. If they were looking for a reason why Emily had survived the attack on her father there really was none better.
Harper reached under the little girl’s desk to retrieve a stylus. “The geek squad even took the girl’s iPad.” She twirled the stylus around her fingers. “If she’s anything like my nieces and nephews, there’s going to be hell to pay in the form of tears and tantrums.”
“Emily Wright is sedated,” he told her. “And I doubt her iPad is what she’ll be crying about when she wakes up.”
She winced, obviously chagrined by her callous words. “Sorry, boss.”
“No apologies necessary. It’s totally understandable—gallows humor, distancing yourself in the face of this kind of violence. It’s a healthy protective mechanism.” He almost rolled his eyes—not at Harper but himself. He of all people needed to learn to practice what he preached. But Harper was young, just starting her career. Maybe she could learn better than he had. “Just remember,” he finished. “These are people. We serve them. They deserve our respect as well as our best efforts.”
She made a tiny noise that she quickly swallowed. “You sound just like my dad. He’s a preacher.”
“Didn’t mean to give you a sermon. Just a reminder.” It was the first personal piece of information—other than her career ambitions—that she’d shared. “How’d the daughter of a preacher end up a cop?”
Her hesitation made him regret the question. It wasn’t his job to pry, only to observe and evaluate her performance. Decide if she was ready for promotion to detective.
“I’m the only girl, but I’ve got four older brothers who followed him into the family business.” A tone of wistful regret underscored her words. “Guess I’m just the black sheep of the family.” She attempted a faltering smile. “Literally. I’m adopted. They’re all white.”
Luka nodded his understanding, imagining what it would have been like, growing up in a family like that. Always an outsider, the equivalent of an asterisk on the family’s annual Christmas card.
“CSU found no evidence the killer came up here,” she said, turning the topic away from her personal life.
Luka remembered the booties that had obscured the killer’s footprints. The lack of other obvious evidence. “This actor doesn’t leave any evidence besides what he wants us to find. And if he—or they—were after Wright’s work, this is where they would have come. Maybe they did take something like a hard drive or copies of Wright’s work.”
“Then it’s up to the cyber nerds.” She caressed the collection of wooden puzzles—none of them cheap, a few obviously hand-crafted.
Luka glanced below the desk beside him, spying a colorful stuffed penguin hiding in the far recesses. Dropped while sitting on her father’s lap as he worked? Loving father, husband willing to sacrifice his academic career to move here and help care for his wife’s great aunt… why was Ian targeted?
He slid into
the desk chair. It was positioned several inches lower than he’d expect for a man of Ian’s height—low enough to accommodate a squirming six-year-old on his lap. He opened the first filing cabinet drawer and found the usual collection of detritus that any top desk drawer held: pencils, pens, markers, paperclips, tape, stapler, sticky notes, an assortment of paper pads of varying sizes, and, a tumble of crumpled receipts and notes. Harper joined him, spreading them onto the empty space left behind by Ian’s computer and smoothed them flat, taking pictures of each. Dry cleaning tickets, a variety of restaurant receipts—all places within walking distance of the college campus and all timed around lunch—a few random shopping lists and grocery receipts, and one from an art supply store.
That caught Luka’s interest. Supplies for Emily? Maybe a school project? Sketchpads, expensive pencils, high grade drawing paper, charcoals, and pastels—too sophisticated for any kid. He turned the receipt over—there was writing on the back, a dainty feminine hand:
Tues 1pm, can’t wait, Trina.
An address and phone number accompanied the note.
“Trina? Trina who couldn’t wait… Who the hell is she?” Harper said in an excited tone. “Maybe our victim was having an affair? Could that have been what got him killed?” As she craned forward to examine the receipt and the note, her foot hit the stuffed animal on the floor. She bent down to retrieve it.
When she straightened, she was holding a long cardboard tube, the kind used to carry architect drawings and blueprints. “This was in the back corner, behind the file cabinet.”
Luka pushed the chair aside and they both stood over the desk as Harper popped the plastic end cap off of the tube. Inside was a roll of thick art paper.
She spread the papers out over the desktop, framed between her gloved hands. Slowly, she turned each, revealing images of a naked woman in a variety of poses. All labeled “Trina” with dates scrawled in the bottom corner. Going back months.
