Duty and the Beast

by Chelsea Field

  I drove home and collapsed into bed, too exhausted to worry about Connor’s reaction to the letter.

  Connor

  It had been bad enough when I hadn’t seen her for days. Like a gaping hole in my life. I hadn’t realized exactly how large a space she’d carved out for herself.

  But at least holes were silent.

  Seeing her every day. The face that had been plaguing my thoughts. The lips I knew so intimately—how they looked in each situation—when she was amused, determined, or flushed with pleasure. The familiar curves I’d explored every inch of. The hope in her eyes when she looked at me. It was too much.

  The letter was good. Logical. Rational. A compelling argument for all the reasons we should be together. She argued so persuasively for how we could make it work that, for a minute, I could almost believe it. Envisage it the way she could. Her words dredged up hope like a desperate man scrapes up mud from the bottom of a dry well.

  I wished it could be enough to sustain me. But I knew better. I wasn’t strong enough. Wasn’t brave enough to risk confronting hell again. And I was sick of thinking this over and over every night only to come to the same conclusion.

  Seeking calm, I found my favorite Handel concerto and turned it up loud.

  Petal started howling.

  I wasn’t so far away from it myself.

  17

  “Did you open the letter I gave you?” I asked Connor on our way to the police station.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, that was the first hurdle cleared. “Okay then. Would you like to share your thoughts?”

  “No.”

  Aaaand we fell flat on our face at the second hurdle. Hmm. This conversation wasn’t going the way I’d planned. The letter I’d labored over had to have evoked some thoughts and feelings in him. But how could I get him to discuss them?

  Connor gave me plenty of silence to think it over.

  Our vicinity to the police station made up my mind. I would let him get away with avoiding the topic—temporarily.

  But tonight, when we’d finished for the day? I vowed I was going to force him to speak with me. No matter what it took. Because we were never going to be able to resolve this if he didn’t.

  For now though, I tried to lighten the mood. “All right. We’ll talk about it later, but you’re not allowed to claim your dog ate my letter and you’ve forgotten what it said.”

  “She’s not my dog.”

  That wasn’t the agreement I was seeking. “So you keep saying, but I noticed you didn’t ask Hunt or Adeline if they know anyone looking for a canine companion.”

  “Maybe I asked when you weren’t around.”

  “Uh-huh. Or maybe Petal is winning you over.”

  “No comment.”

  “You can refuse to comment all you like, but it’s not going to change the inevitable happy ending.”

  I hoped he realized Petal wasn’t the only happy ending I was referring to.

  He refused to comment on that too.

  Police Commander Hunt was in a similarly fine mood.

  “Morning,” I said.

  He grunted.

  Sheesh, what was with my life and being surrounded by grouchy, monosyllabic men? First Jim, then Connor, now Hunt. You’d think they were the only ones who had problems.

  Even Oliver seemed to have caught a dose of the malady.

  My musing made me glad to see Adeline walk through the doors, if for no other reason than to have a person around who knew how to smile. But then she opened her mouth, and I realized grouchy men might not be the worst company to keep.

  “Good morning, fellow sleuths! Please tell me you had a breakthrough yesterday and we’re doing something more exciting today. I need to experience a wide range of activities for my education, after all.” She waved her hands in front of our noses as if she hadn’t just prioritized her acting education above a double homicide investigation and added, “By the way, what do you think of this nail polish shade? Does it say ‘serious but sexy’ to you?”

  If I said no, would she leave to get them redone?

  I was saved from my ethical dilemma by a uniformed officer’s arrival. “Commander,” the officer said, giving the rest of us a polite nod, “Stanley Cox is saying he’s ready to talk.”

  It turned out that Stanley Cox wasn’t just ready to talk, he was ready to talk to me. A problem since as far as Hunt was aware, I’d never interviewed Stanley, so he shouldn’t know of my existence, let alone my unofficial involvement in the case. Judging by the weird bulgy muscles in Hunt’s jaw, he wasn’t happy about it. But he wasn’t pigheaded enough to let that get in the way of a crucial witness wanting to open up.

  As I reached the door to the interrogation room, the bristles of his mustache loomed in my peripheral vision. “You and I will be discussing this later.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I lied, wishing he didn’t still have the power to make my legs quake.

  It wasn’t my fault. If Hunt had pretended to be nicer, maybe Stanley would’ve been happy to talk to him.

  The commander insisted on joining me inside, which left Connor and Adeline in the observation room. Adeline had smiled at the arrangement. Connor had frowned, perhaps not wanting to be the object of any further sketches. But I’d already pushed my luck with Hunt as far as it’d go, so I kept my peace.

  Stanley looked worse for wear today, as if he’d aged years overnight. The wire frames did nothing to hide the puffiness and discoloration under his eyes, and even his hairline seemed to have receded farther in defeat. I felt a spike of pity for him. Which was silly when my intention had been to make him lose sleep over the whole situation.

  Maybe Hunt and I could do a niceness transplant.

  Stanley started speaking, and my inane thoughts skidded to a stop. “On Wednesday morning, I received a phone call from an unknown number. Not that my phone had any credit mind you, but I could still take incoming calls. The voice on the other end was digitally distorted, sounded male, but with tech these days it could’ve easily been a woman. Anyway, they told me they had some good news for me. That they knew I could do with some. That the son of a bitch Richard Knightley was dead, and that they’d killed him for what he’d done to so many lives like mine.”

  Stanley recounted the tale as if the words were ingrained forever in his mind, as if he’d replayed them to himself a thousand times. Maybe he had.

  I listened in shock. Damon Wood was right. Stanley was just a patsy.

  “The person said they were wondering if I might be interested, since they knew I was racked with guilt over ruining my wife’s last years on this godforsaken planet, in claiming the murder as my own in return for a generous amount of cash. They explained how they’d done what they needed to do but were worried now about the flow-on effects to their family. And they knew the damage had already been done in mine but that this might be an arrangement that could benefit both of us. I could redeem myself, be seen as a hero to all the victims out there that knew the way I did the lawsuits weren’t going to go anywhere. On top of that, they’d give me half a million dollars to do whatever I wanted with. Maybe give it to my wife. Maybe make my time in prison easier. They’d give me enough to do both.”

  Up until now, Stanley had been watching his hands, which were fidgeting on the table. But here he raised his eyes to meet mine.

  “When I expressed my cautious interest, they told me they’d taken out a second guy as well. A guy by the name of Isaac Anand who’d been working with Knightley to make sure the cases against him would never succeed. And that I’d need to confess to his murder too.”

  He shrugged and looked away.

  “Seeing as I’d been contemplating stepping in front of a bus the night before and ending my miserable existence, it seemed like a reasonable deal. And as they explained exactly how they’d done it, I kind of wished I’d come up with the plan myself. Except they didn’t mention the microcomputer part. G
uess I should’ve known the job would’ve required one, but still when you asked about it, I figured they’d left that detail out so as not to implicate themselves or whoever they got to plant it. Didn’t change the deal we’d struck as far as I was concerned. But when you told me about Isaac and what his grandma had said, well, then I started wondering what else they’d left out or outright lied about. Were we even on the same side? What if Isaac really was a good guy? And what if his grandma hates me with the same hatred I held for Knightley?”

  The edge of desperation in Stanley’s voice in the last question spoke volumes. That was the crux of the issue for him. He’d spent so long despising Knightley and all the pain and destruction he was responsible for that the idea someone might feel the same way about him was horrifying.

  Stanley shrugged again as if it could displace his shame. “So here we are.”

  “Thank you for your honesty,” I said, meaning the words. It was gutsy of him to come clean. He was giving up all chance of his promised half a million, and he’d probably still face jail time for obstructing a police investigation. Plus I was struggling to get my head around how someone could be so miserable that confessing to a double homicide they didn’t commit seemed like a reasonable deal. The poor man.

  Hunt was all business.

  “Can you tell us any more about how the person spoke? Were their words cultured or rough? Did they use a lot of slang?”

  “No, they sounded, I don’t know, how a white-collar worker would speak rather than a kid from a bad neighborhood.”

  So, like any and every one of our current suspects then.

  “How were they going to get you the money?”

  “Well, toward the end of our conversation, after I’d agreed to the deal, they told me to go outside and pick up the cardboard box sitting by the door. That it was a ‘good faith’ deposit to prove they were trustworthy for the rest.”

  “What was in the box?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars in cash. I assumed they’d get me the last four hundred and fifty in a similar fashion.”

  “Did you see who dropped it off?”

  “No. But they put it there while we were talking, so I think someone else must have delivered it, or I would’ve heard their voice outside my door.”

  “Did you get the last four hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “No. The agreement was I’d get it after I’d been convicted. Otherwise, I’d be able to take it and run.”

  “You know you’re going to have to give us the fifty thousand, don’t you?”

  Stanley sagged so deep in his chair that he seemed in danger of spilling out of it. “I know.” He fiddled with his cuffs and asked in a small voice, “What’s going to happen to me now?”

  18

  There were too many people to comfortably squeeze around Hunt’s desk, so he brought us into what must have been the briefing room. He flipped the whiteboard over so we couldn’t read it, procured some paper from an old copier in the corner, and sat down at one of the tables. Connor, Adeline, and I pulled up seats to join him.

  A ticking wall clock marked the passing time while we waited for Hunt to speak.

  We were an odd group. Adeline was doing something on her phone—which could’ve been anything from googling more interrogation techniques to posting photos of her nails on social media. Hunt was massaging his neck like the occupants of the room pained him. And Connor was sitting economically still, as usual.

  I hadn’t missed the occasional glare Hunt had shot my way, letting me know my bawling out for talking to Stanley without permission was coming soon. Only Adeline’s presence stopped it from happening now, which put me in the odd position of being grateful to her.

  Hunt dropped his hand from his neck to the table with a thud. “Right. Let’s review what we’ve learned from Stanley’s confession this morning and”—he glanced meaningfully at Adeline, whose attention was still on her phone—“the tech we decrypted last night.” That was another topic we couldn’t delve into with Adeline present. “Then we’ll figure out how that information affects each of our current suspects.”

  We all threw in our observations (most of Adeline’s were of the unhelpful variety) and came up with a list.

  The killer had sufficient funds to bribe Stanley

  The killer knew details of Stanley’s personal loss as well as having some idea of his technical capabilities

  The killer was persuasive and used language suited to a white-collar worker

  The killer contacted Stanley about being a patsy only after the deaths occurred

  The killer claimed Isaac was helping Richard clear his name

  Stanley played no part in the crime

  The decrypted tech could be worth killing for—both to acquire it and keep it secret

  The murder method implies Isaac was definitely a target, whereas Richard’s death may or may not have been intended. Therefore using Stanley as a patsy may have been planned in advance or a last-minute decision following Richard’s accidental death

  That done, Hunt directed us to talk through the implications for each person of interest.

  No one else jumped in, so I started with the woman who’d been my favorite suspect earlier on. “I think this pretty much rules out the class action lead plaintiff, Patty Wilkinson. Without Isaac helping Richard win the lawsuit, she has no reason to kill him. Plus even if she was misinformed about that, now our original theory that she partnered with Stanley has been disproven, the high-tech murder method doesn’t fit. The woman still uses a paper address book for keeping track of her phone numbers for goodness’ sake.”

  “Agreed,” Connor said. “She would’ve struggled to get the money together too. Though I wouldn’t dismiss her altogether. She could’ve partnered with other victims to both raise the funds and carry out the murder, then chosen Cox to take the fall for it for some reason. She’s very dedicated to her public awareness cause, and her relationship with Cox means she’d know which buttons to push to convince him to confess.”

  Hunt was jotting down notes. “Who else?”

  Connor answered. “Tony Callahan is still a possibility. He’s smart, calculating, and prides himself on collecting the right technology advances at the right time. He also admitted to making an offer on Anand’s breakthrough and being turned down. That said, he has no connection whatsoever to the Knightley scam case, which makes it less plausible he would’ve thought of buying off Stanley as a patsy—whether preplanned or after the fact.”

  Adeline looked up from her phone. “Actually, a quick Google search of ‘Richard Knightley victims’ brings up Stanley’s personal story on the first page. So it wouldn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

  The article Patty had mentioned talking Stanley into, I remembered. I tried not to show my surprise that Adeline had contributed something helpful. She wasn’t dumb by any stretch of the imagination. She just put most of her energy toward her own ends.

  Hunt lifted his pen from the paper. “Is there any reason we can think of that would suggest Knightley might’ve known about the tech breakthrough and so was killed to keep it secret?”

  I’d racked my brain over that and come up empty. “No. Not unless I’m missing something.”

  Hunt grunted. No doubt thinking it was more probable than not that I was missing something. “That leaves Stanley Cox, who has now ruled himself out entirely, and Damon Wood.”

  Connor shifted. “If Damon Wood is behind the double homicide, he’s either the dumbest or smartest criminal I’ve ever met. Without his information, we may never have questioned Cox’s confession or the idea that Anand might not have been helping Knightley. So either he’s the killer playing a very, very long game and convincing us to trust him, or more likely, he’s who he claims to be.”

  Which left us without a single strong suspect. A few possible ones, yes, but no solid leads despite all the new information we’d obtained. I voiced the next thought reluctantly. “There could be another entity we haven’t even
considered yet who was after Isaac’s breakthrough. That kind of tech would be interesting to a lot of people.”

  Adeline drummed her “serious but sexy” nails on the table and summarized the situation for us. “So basically, you still don’t know anything.”

  Ouch.

  Hunt and Connor grunted in unison.

  She missed our reactions and continued on blithely. “No wonder TV speeds this stuff up.”

  Hunt’s mustache seemed to spring extra bristles. “You got something better to do?”

  Maybe she noticed the bristles because her next words were more cautious. “Well, yeah, kinda.”

  Was that the tug of a smile under that mustache? “Feel free to leave then. The next step is above your clearance anyway, so you’ll have to sit it out.”

  Adeline sighed. “Right.” The nails drummed another round before she fixed her pretty hazel eyes on Connor. “Do you think you could call me when something interesting’s about to happen?”

  “If there’s an opportunity to,” he said.

  Adeline’s faith in her own charms meant she interpreted his level of commitment differently to me. “Great!”

  We watched her strut her way out of the room like an adoring fan had laid down a red carpet for this very moment and the paparazzi were waiting. I was fairly sure there wasn’t an iota of regret between us.

  Although I did wish I could steal some of her confidence.

  And maybe that sketch of Connor she’d drawn too.

  What had Etta been thinking forcing her niece’s company on him? I couldn’t believe she was trying to set them up. As much as she’d love to have Connor as a nephew-in-law, she was too smart to think they’d be compatible. But I also couldn’t believe Mae would refuse to show Adeline the ropes. So what was really going on?

  Hunt pushed back from the table, reminding me that a far more important mystery required my attention.

  “Let’s see if those files have finished decrypting yet.” He snatched up the sheet of paper he’d been writing on. “By the look of this, we’d better bloody hope there’s something in them to give us a solid lead.”