False Witness

by Andrew Grant

  “Aside from showing up late, how did she seem?”

  “Out of her mind with excitement. I mean, she was a twenty-one-year-old kid and her boyfriend had just bought her a sports car. How else could she be?”

  “So you stalled her with the paperwork, did the unveiling, then what?”

  “The normal things. Walked her round the outside of the car, to confirm it was in perfect shape. Talked her through its features and controls. Tried to interest her in a monthly service plan, which she refused. Then told her to call me if she had any questions.”

  “Did she call about anything?”

  “No. I didn’t hear from her after she drove away.”

  “She drove here, didn’t she? So what happened to her old car?”

  “It’s still here. She was supposed to be coming back for it. I offered to dispose of it for her. Have you seen it? There’s no chance we could sell it, but I told her we could probably get a few dollars in scrap value. She wasn’t interested, though. Said she didn’t care what it was worth, she wanted to keep it.”

  “Can we see it?”

  —

  Bolitho led the detectives around the back to where the Nova was hidden from sight. He’d had her leave the keys so they could move it. Devereaux looked inside but couldn’t see anything interesting.

  “Don’t let anyone near it. We’ll have it taken to the lab. Maybe there’s a reason she was so anxious to hold on to it.”

  “Sentimental value, I’d guess. Probably her first car. Is there anything else I can help you with, Detectives?”

  “Just one other question. When she left, which way did she go?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t notice.”

  “What about your security cameras. Do they cover the exit?”

  “I’m not sure. But our security manager will know. Do you want to talk to him?”

  —

  Bolitho led the detectives to the security office, which was more like a closet with no windows. A metal table had been squeezed in crossways against the rear wall, and two split-screen monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse were perched on it. The security manager used them to call up the relevant footage. It showed Deborah pause on the forecourt for a couple of minutes, fiddling with some controls in the center of the dashboard. She took her phone out of her purse and pressed various keys on it for another couple of minutes. Then she approached the exit. She signaled right. But almost immediately changed her mind and went left, toward central Birmingham.

  “What was she doing?” Devereaux turned to Bolitho.

  “It’s hard to tell. I couldn’t see too well. From the area she was concentrating on, I’d guess she was either setting up the navigation, or the entertainment system. If she wanted the Sirius radio, for example, she’d have to have called in with a promo code to activate it. Or she could have been streaming music from her phone.”

  “What about pairing her phone, for Bluetooth? I’m assuming the car has hands-free.”

  “Of course. It could have been that, I guess.”

  “That would make sense.” Devereaux turned to Garretty. “Remember Deborah’s mom said she texted something about her phone not connecting?”

  “Right.” Garretty nodded. “And about not coming home that night. The question is, who was she planning to spend it with, given that Ben Warren was out of town? And was that where she was headed when she left here?”

  Friday. Afternoon.

  When Tim Jensen said he had a free slot in his schedule in an hour, Alexandra thought she could easily make it to the hospital in time. But she’d not counted on how long it would take to print out the French vocab flash cards she planned on using to keep Nicole occupied. How slow moving Nicole could be, when she was unenthusiastic about going somewhere. Or how hard it would be to find a parking space near the entrance she needed to use. She’d been tempted to copy what she’d seen Devereaux do countless times and just dump her Range Rover in a no-parking zone, but resisted the urge. After all, if she could pick up his bad habits without even being related to him, it would render her whole research trip pretty pointless.

  Alexandra followed the directions Dr. Jensen had given her through a maze of color-coded corridors until she reached the waiting area outside the office suite he was using. There was a toy hamper in one corner, a drawing board on an easel with a selection of colored chalks on a shelf beneath it, a rug decorated with bright pictures of jungle animals, and sitting on a couch opposite the window, their feet not touching the ground, was a pair of twin girls, maybe six or seven years old. They were shrieking and kicking at each other while tugging at a rag doll, and then only quieted down marginally when they saw Alexandra approaching.

  —

  A character in Alexandra’s favorite historical mystery series frequently asserts that men don’t become interesting until they’re over forty. She could have been talking about Tim Jensen, Alexandra thought when she saw him emerge from his office. Gone was the painfully thin, geeky undergrad she remembered from Notre Dame. The new Tim was rugged and tanned, and looked like he’d be equally at home conquering peaks in the Himalayas as conducting experiments in a laboratory.

  “Alex, you made it!” Jensen leaned in for a hug. “And this must be your daughter. Nicole? She’s beautiful! The spitting image of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know, I didn’t realize you were married.”

  “I’m not.”

  “All right, then. Well, let me just take my foot out of my mouth. Then why don’t we get Nicole situated, and we can get started. I’ve got another pair of twins on their way in about forty-five minutes. These guys here were with me earlier, and we’re just waiting for their mom to come and pick them up. I’m sure she won’t be much longer.”

  Friday. Afternoon.

  Carrie Medders was an IT major at UAB, but on Saturdays and two evenings a week she worked at a store on First Avenue named Pocket Pooches. Devereaux had walked past the place many times and had always scratched his head at the collection of tiny, dog-shaped Crimson Tide jerseys and Auburn hats they had on display in the window. He wasn’t any more impressed with the tiny canine faces he could see peeking out from the stack of little cages at the back of the store. If you want a dog, he thought, get a dog. Something that can run for miles in the woods. Catch other animals. Defend your home from intruders. Not something you’d be constantly worried about losing down the back of the sofa, or stepping on. And he certainly hadn’t developed a better appreciation for the place after one of the residents in his building had bought a miniature Affenpinscher there, and a neighbor the guy was having a dispute with called Pest Control, claiming to have seen a rat in his apartment.

  Devereaux and Garretty arrived at the store before Carrie’s shift started, so they waited in the car out front—in a no-parking zone—until they saw a twenty-something approaching, wearing a uniform-style blouse decorated with cutesy prints of cartoon dogs and bones.

  “Carrie Medders?” Devereaux climbed out of the car.

  “Yes.” Medders put her hands on her hips. “How did you know?”

  “It says so on your pet store name badge.”

  “Oh. OK. Well, who are you?”

  “I’m Detective Devereaux.” He showed her his badge. “My partner’s Detective Garretty. You’re not in any trouble, but we were hoping you’d spare us a minute to answer a couple of questions. It’s about your friend Deborah Holt.”

  “Debs? Oh no. What’s she done?”

  “A little privacy might be good.” Devereaux opened the rear door of the car. “We just need a minute of your time.”

  Medders climbed into the car. “Has something happened to her? You’re freaking me out a little bit here.”

  Devereaux got back in the passenger seat and swiveled around to get a clearer view into the rear. “Ms. Medders, I’m very sorry to tell you this, but yesterday Deborah was the victim of an assault. A fatal assault, I’m afraid. She didn’t survive.”

  “No!” Medders bit her low
er lip and turned her face to the window. “I knew something was wrong when she didn’t show up. I should have done something. Told someone. This is terrible.”

  “You had plans to meet Deborah yesterday?”

  “Not plans, exactly. She texted me after lunch, said she had an amazing surprise to show me, from Ben. Her boyfriend. She said maybe we could grab a quick glass of something afterward. Which is Debs-speak for let’s stay up all night and get completely off our faces.”

  “So you didn’t have an exact time or place lined up?”

  “No. Debs didn’t like being tied down to routines or schedules. She just had a habit of appearing when it suited her.”

  “And when she didn’t appear, what did you think?”

  “Look, Detective. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But Deborah wasn’t the most dependable of girls. If she said she’d meet you, it was fifty-fifty at best. She was like that with everyone, apart from Ben. When she didn’t show up, I figured he’d maybe come back from New York early, as another surprise. He loves to surprise her. Oh God, this is so awful. It was her birthday…”

  “What’s Ben like?”

  “Ben? He’s the sweetest guy. Kind. Generous. Good-looking. They were perfect together. I know it hadn’t been long, but I couldn’t ever see them splitting up.”

  “Did you ever see him lose his temper?”

  “No. Can’t say I did.”

  “What about if something surprised him? If he found out about something he didn’t like?”

  Medders shook her head. “Like I say, Detective, he was very level-headed. He seemed to take everything in stride. Debs said she’d told him about all her skeletons, on like their second date. You’ve got to understand, she’d done some crazy shit when she was younger. She said she didn’t want to be always worrying about what he might find out.”

  “OK. What about other people in her life? Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? Had she argued with anyone recently? Or mentioned if any strangers were hanging around her work, or her home?”

  “No. Nothing like that. I mean, if you’d told me this had happened a year ago, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Or for a few years before that, to be honest. But not now. She was amazing. She’d totally turned her life around. Apart from being a little flaky, organization-wise, she was a model citizen. Ever since she came back from Nashville. She was, like, a different girl. We’ve been best friends since we were fourteen, so I know. Believe me. Some of the nonsense she pulled before she left town? Let’s just say you wouldn’t want your daughter doing a tenth of it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Do you know why she came back from Nashville?”

  “She finally figured out she wasn’t the next Madonna. And she could no longer hide from the fact that her boyfriend was cheating on her.”

  “Her boyfriend being this guitar legend Thor?”

  “Ha. Yes. That hopeless loser.”

  “Was Thor the father of her baby?”

  Medders paused for a moment. “You know about that. Yes. He was the father. Lucky for the poor kid he’ll never know him.”

  “How did he feel about Deborah giving his kid up for adoption? Was he pissed?”

  “Oliver? I doubt it. He was probably relieved. He only cared about things that would make his life easier. Or more exciting. I doubt diaper changing and midnight feeds are on that list.”

  “His real name’s Oliver?”

  “Yeah. Oliver Casey. A twenty-four-carat scumbag. Everyone could see it, apart from Debs. Until he become so blatant about not being able to keep it in his pants, and the penny finally dropped.”

  “Did he ever show up in Birmingham after she came back?”

  “Not that I know of. He already had some other skank on the side, and Debs wasn’t working or earning money, so why would he bother?”

  “Did she ever get back in touch with him?”

  “No. I don’t think she would have done that anyway, but specially not after the thing that happened on her way home. She said there was no way she was going back to her old habits after that.”

  “What thing?”

  “It sounds so lame, but it really made an impact on her. So, she finally grew the stones to leave Oliver and started driving, kind of at random. Before she knew it she was back in Birmingham. Heading for her mom’s house. But she couldn’t go there. She just freaked out and came up with this crazy, spur-of-the-moment plan to drive to Mexico. She was pregnant. She was broke. It was crazy, right? But she’d have done it. She was that kind of girl. But before she was out of the city her car broke down, and some guy fixed it for her. Some mechanic type, with tools and spare parts and all that. And here’s the thing. She had no money to pay him so she was about to blow him for it—I told you she did that sort of thing, when she had to—but he refused. He told her all the payment he wanted was for her to go back to her mom’s. Give herself a second chance at life. And that’s exactly what she did.”

  Friday. Afternoon.

  “Don’t look so alarmed!” Jensen scooped up a handful of cards which were covered with strange ink-blob shapes from the couch in front of his desk and gestured for Alexandra to sit. “They’re based on the Rorschach test. Want to give it a try? Just look at this one, don’t think about it, and tell me what you see.”

  “Are you a psychiatrist now, Tim, as well as a researcher?”

  “Not at all. I’m only interested in these from a statistical point of view.” Jensen retreated to the other side of the desk and held up one of the cards. “Take this one, as an example. Ninety-five percent of children under eight say it looks like a giraffe. Four percent say it’s a dinosaur. The others—weird things. This is only part of my study, but what I’m trying to do is determine whether, where you have one twin who falls into the four percent or even the one percent, is the other one more likely than statistically normal to do the same.”

  “I see.” Alexandra didn’t think the shape looked like either a giraffe or a dinosaur, but wasn’t sure she should admit that. “And what will that prove?”

  “Who knows?” Jensen smiled disarmingly. “But I’ll think of something. Anyway, enough of my work. What is it that I can do to help you?”

  “Well, I’m not so interested in shared characteristics in siblings. What I have is…let’s say, a person of interest. Call him Person A. Let’s assume that Person A’s father displayed some seriously anti-social characteristics. Criminally anti-social. What I need to know is, how likely are those characteristics to be inherited by Person A?”

  “Hmm. Intriguing. Is this for a defense you’re working on? A variation on an insanity plea? Or diminished responsibility, at least?”

  “Something along those lines. I’d rather not be too specific at this point. I just need to know whether I’m totally barking up the wrong tree. If there’s nothing to suggest that person A’s behavior is likely to be affected by traits inherited from his father, that’s no problem. In some ways it would be a relief, in fact. Because there’s another direction I could quite happily go.”

  “OK. Let’s think this thing through. How severe are the crimes that this Person A’s father committed?”

  “Extremely severe. We’re talking about multiple murders. Brutal ones.”

  “OK. And did these happen recently? Or at a distance in the past?”

  “In the 1970s.”

  “Has there been much contact between Person A and his father in the meantime? I’m trying to gauge the role of environmental factors here.”

  “There’s been no contact. His father died a long time ago. It’s been forty-odd years.”

  “No prospect of comparative testing, then.” Jensen couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. “You know, I’m going to have to think about this one. It doesn’t fall squarely into my field, and there are lots of things to consider. There’s some recent research I was just reading about, for example. Epigenetics. There’s evidence emerging that suggests gene function can be altered without changes t
o the base sequence.” He noticed the blank look creeping across Alexandra’s face. “It means that it may be possible for acquired traits to be passed on to future generations, as well as purely genetic ones. I need to talk to a couple of people. Read up a little bit. How about we get together again later and I’ll let you know what I’ve come up with then?”

  “That would be great.” Alexandra checked herself. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Of course not. Although my schedule is pretty crazy next week. How about this for an idea—let’s meet tomorrow. I’ll buy you dinner. What do you say?”

  As they emerged from the office, Alexandra was still trying to recover from the surprise of having said yes. That hadn’t been part of her plan, and it didn’t leave her enough mental bandwidth to register that the twins were still sitting on the couch. That they were no longer making a ruckus. That one had a fresh bruise above her eye. Or that the rag doll they’d been fighting over was now tucked in next to Nicole, in the chair she’d chosen on the other side of the room.

  Friday. Late afternoon.

  “Tell me you’re close to making an arrest.” Lieutenant Hale pushed three empty coffee mugs aside on her desk and drained the final drops from a fourth. “Imagine what the press’ll do to us if this guy’s still on the loose come Sunday, with all those feature column inches to fill.”

  “I can’t make any promises.” Devereaux locked his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, coming dangerously close to dislodging a stack of papers that was teetering on the edge of Hale’s desk. “The crime scene didn’t give us much. There was no weapon, obviously, since the victim was strangled. There were no witnesses. The body was probably dumped out of a car or small van, but we’re nowhere with the make or model. We don’t even know where the woman was killed.”