Veil of Night: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  “I was evidently the last one to see her alive,” Jaclyn replied, her tone bleak.

  “No, you weren’t. The person who killed her was.”

  “Okay, the last one to see her that they know of. Throw in the fact that she slapped me, then fired me, and anyone could say I had motive.”

  “Considering her personality, probably half the Atlanta metro area had motive,” Madelyn said fiercely. “Besides, when you left the reception hall, you met me at Claire’s. I’m your alibi.”

  “Evidently coming up with an exact time of death in real life isn’t as easy as it is on television shows. Oh … even worse. I forgot my briefcase this afternoon, and left it at the reception hall. They found it there. I could have killed her either before meeting you, or after.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, of course not. I’m not really worried,” Jaclyn said, even though Madelyn could hear the thread of worry in her voice that said the exact opposite. “I didn’t do it, so there can’t be any evidence that says I did. It’s just that, starting out, I’m the most likely suspect.” She swallowed audibly. “They took my clothes.”

  “Your clothes?” Madelyn asked, trying to envision Jaclyn standing naked in her town house, without a stitch to wear.

  “The clothes I wore today. I’d washed them, which doesn’t look good, either. They took everything that was in the washing machine.”

  At least they hadn’t taken all her clothes. Still, the action struck her as being rude and humiliating, and she knew her daughter needed her. “Let me see if I can’t speed things up, get the happy couple on their way to forever together,” she said. “Then I’ll be there lickety-split. Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll make sure this all gets straightened out.”

  Jaclyn hung up, comforted just by talking to her mother. Hearing Madelyn’s outrage made her feel better, made her feel as if this would all go away tomorrow. The police would find whoever had killed Carrie, and tonight would be nothing more than a nasty taste in her mouth.

  The irrational thought occurred that maybe she should call her dad. If anyone would know some tricks about dealing with the police, it would be Jacky.

  Something was seriously wrong with the world when she was considering asking her dad for advice. He’d probably have her on the lam in Mexico before dawn. Running away from trouble was Jacky’s stock-in-trade.

  No, she’d stick right here, cooperate with everything the police asked of her. Madelyn would support her through thick and thin, and everyone else who had been at the reception hall today would back up everything she’d said. And when this was over with, if Eric Wilder dared ask her out again as if nothing had happened, she’d restrain the impulse to call him a low-lying, back-stabbing, sewer-sucking son of a bitch—after all, he was only doing his job—and simply say she didn’t think they suited each other. Taking the high road would make her feel better.

  She burst into tears.

  So much for feeling better.

  Chapter Twelve

  ERIC WAS SO TIRED HE COULD PRACTICALLY FEEL HIS ass dragging on the pavement behind him as he trudged into H.P.D. Not only had it been a long day, but he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. The reason he hadn’t gotten much sleep had been a good one, but sleep-deprived was still sleep-deprived. He had a ton of evidence and paperwork to deal with before he could go home, so he doubted he’d be seeing his bed for another few hours, at least.

  The victim’s family had been notified. That was always the hardest part. In this case, because her fiancé’s father was a state senator, he and Garvey had made two of the difficult visits. The victim’s parents were devastated. They hadn’t dissolved in a flood of tears and questions, but instead looked as if they’d been flattened, their reason for living suddenly taken away from them.

  The fiancé, Sean Dennison, had been almost catatonic with shock. “But I talked to her,” he kept saying. “It can’t be her.” They’d already known he’d called the victim because they’d checked the calls on her phone. He’d been at work when he called her, he said, something that could be easily verified in the morning, so if it was a lie, it was a stupid one. Not that Eric discounted stupid; he dealt with it every day. Criminals, by and large, weren’t mental giants.

  Eric had already made one trip back to H.P.D. to log in evidence, before going to interview Jaclyn, and now he had her wet clothing to deal with. He had the consent forms she’d signed, he had reports to write—hell, was it any wonder he’d decided to throw a can of oil at a robber instead of shooting at him? If he’d fired his weapon this morning, he’d still be filling out paperwork. Instead, he was free to work a case … and fill out paperwork. There wasn’t any getting away from the damn forms and reports.

  He took care of logging in the evidence and transferring it for testing, though in the case of Jaclyn’s clothing he was pretty sure he wasn’t proving guilt, more likely eliminating her as a viable suspect. As Garvey had said, she didn’t have the vibe, didn’t ring the internal alarm bells. They couldn’t enter their gut feelings as evidence in court, though, so until she was solidly cleared he had to be extra careful in how he treated everything pertaining to her. Not only did every i have to be dotted, but he had to look at her longer and harder than he normally would have done, just to remove the possible taint of preferential treatment.

  He couldn’t even call her and say, “Hey, I don’t think you did it, but I have to do this by the book and treat you like any other suspect.” That in itself would be stepping over the line.

  This wasn’t the way he wanted it, but it was the way things had to be. After this case was closed, he’d try again with her. Maybe she wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Maybe she could be logical and not have drama all over the damn place. She didn’t seem like the drama queen type, though; she was pretty cool and controlled. That gave him hope. It also gave him incentive to get this mess cleared up as fast as he could.

  Out of sheer curiosity, he did a computer search on kabob skewers. There were bamboo skewers, stainless-steel skewers, decorative skewers, plain-jane skewers. This had to be a woman thing, because no man in his right mind would give a damn about cooking chunks of meat and vegetables on a stick. Okay, maybe a professional chef would, but as far as he was concerned it was damn silly.

  He pushed away the report he was writing, leaned back in his chair, and propped his feet on top of the desk. Lacing his fingers behind his neck, he let his shoulder muscles relax as he closed his eyes and mentally processed everything he’d seen and heard tonight, putting things in order.

  First and foremost, the homicide was almost certainly classified as second-degree murder rather than capital murder or even murder one. The choice of murder weapon—kabob skewers—suggested a lack of premeditation. Whoever had killed Carrie hadn’t gone there with the intent to kill, because who could count on having kabob skewers conveniently at hand?

  Any of the vendors who had been there, plus Jaclyn, plus Melissa DeWitt. They had all known the skewers were there. On the other hand, it would take someone conversant with homicide laws to make a crime look unpremeditated when it was actually capital murder, and generally a killer didn’t think about lowering the level of the crime he’d be charged with so much as he thought about getting away with it, period. No, Carrie Edwards had been killed in the heat of the moment, with a weapon at hand, which in this case was kabob skewers. A skillful defense attorney might even make a credible argument that kabob skewers wouldn’t normally be considered a deadly weapon, that it was an unfortunate accident that one of the skewers had slipped between Carrie’s ribs and pierced her heart.

  Carrie had been stabbed multiple times, with multiple skewers, as if the killer had simply started grabbing skewers and stabbing away. When one got stuck, or dropped, another one was at hand. That in turn suggested a frenzied rage. She hadn’t been killed coldly, or calmly. And afterward her wedding veil had been draped over her face, a clear indication that the perp didn’t want to see what had happened.

&
nbsp; This was an acquaintance killing. Carrie had known her assailant.

  The angles of the skewers might tell them something about the height of the attacker. Carrie had been—he checked his notes—five-foot-four. She’d been wearing shoes with three-inch heels, placing her at five-seven. He’d visually examined every skewer, and the skewers seemed to have been stuck in her at several different angles. She wouldn’t have been standing there motionless, though, while someone skewered her—okay, bad pun, even though it was only in his head. She’d have been struggling, trying to get away, maybe trying to grapple with her assailant. That would skew—damn it, he couldn’t avoid the word. It was as bad as paperwork, sticking to him like chewing gum on the bottom of his shoe.

  “If you’re gonna sleep, Wilder, why not go home?”

  The voice was Garvey’s. Without opening his eyes, Eric said, “Don’t interrupt me while I’m detecting.”

  “Oh, is that what it’s called now?”

  He could feel Garvey settling on the edge of his desk, and he sighed as he gave in and opened his eyes, looking up at the slightly battered, slightly worn face of his sergeant. “Why are you still here?”

  Garvey gave a thin smile. “Like you, I’m detecting. It feels good to actually be working a case instead of wading through paperwork, shuffling you guys around, and running interference when one of you screws up.”

  Eric could understand that. Even though his own ambition was to go as high as he could in the local police hierarchy—though he hadn’t ruled out moving into a state or federal job—he could also see where he’d miss working the cases. If he went state or federal, he might be able to stay in investigations. That was in the future, though; the Edwards murder case was right now. “So, what are you detecting?”

  “I’m visualizing the angles of penetration,” Garvey began.

  Eric snorted. “For God’s sake, man, get your mind off sex and back on the case.”

  “Smart-ass,” Garvey growled, before grinning in appreciation.

  Eric took his feet off the top of the desk and sat up. “Funny thing; that’s exactly what I was doing,” he admitted. “From what I saw, the angles are all over the place: from the left, from the right, slanted up, slanted down. Some of them were dangling from fairly superficial wounds. She’d have been fighting, trying to run. Maybe she fell, and the perp came straight down with a skewer, and that’s the one that got her heart. Unless the M.E. says the wounds only look as if they came from every direction, it’s gonna be hard to guess at the perp’s height.”

  He picked up a pen and quickly sketched one of the skewers. “These suckers are eighteen, nineteen inches long, stainless steel. They’re big, but they’d be tricky to hold while you’re stabbing someone with them. This little ring at the end is the only place to grip them, otherwise, when the point hit resistance, your hand would slide right down the skewer.”

  “Not the best weapon to choose if you want to kill someone. The perp didn’t go there intending to kill her.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We have seven people who knew the skewers were there: the wedding planner, the reception hall manager, the dressmaker, the florist, the veil-maker, the cake-maker, and the caterer. I haven’t ruled out the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, either.” As Garvey rolled his eyes upward, Eric reminded himself to try going lighter on the smart-assness. He tried that a lot, usually without much success. “Anyway, three of those people had had disagreements with the victim just prior to the killing, but the other four may well have had run-ins with her in the past. The picture we’re getting of her isn’t warm and cozy; it’s more like bitch-on-wheels, running down anyone who gets in her way.”

  “Nine times out of ten,” Garvey said prosaically, “the perp is either family or friend. Maybe the groom realized his mistake and tried to break up with her.”

  “I wish it’d be that obvious, but I don’t think he’s good for it. He said he was at work when he called her, which is too easy to prove or disprove, and I think the M.E. is going to give us a t.o.d. that rules him out, unless he can teleport.” He wouldn’t say so out loud, but he hoped the time of death would rule out Jaclyn, too. The medical examiner’s estimate of time of death wouldn’t be down to the exact minute, the way it was on television shows—hell, practically nothing they did was the way it happened on television shows, except maybe breathing—but they could get a fairly narrow time frame.

  The techs hadn’t been able to lift any useable prints from the kabob skewers; as he’d noted, the skewers were too slender to really let anyone over the age of two get a good grip. Anyone grabbing the small wooden ring on the end would more likely hold the skewer with the ring pressing against his palm, rather than his fingertips, for striking power.

  “What about the gray-haired man Ms. Wilde says she saw at the hall?”

  “Neither of us thinks she’s good for the perp, so if she’s innocent, she’d have no reason to lie.”

  “Mrs. DeWitt didn’t see anyone between the time she went into her office and when she found the body.”

  “Doesn’t mean no one went in. She admitted the side door was unlocked. It may be that Ms. Wilde is actually the only witness who can tie the killer to the scene, unless we come up with some forensic evidence.”

  That could be complicated. He hadn’t met the groom’s father, the state senator, but he’d seen him in political ads; he was gray-haired. The victim’s father was gray-haired. According to Mrs. DeWitt, there had been three other parties touring the reception hall earlier in the day, and two of them included an older man. He fully expected the crime scene techs to come up with a variety of stray gray hairs, and any of the multitude of people who’d been in the hall could have been in contact with someone gray-haired during the day and picked up a small hair. Wonderful.

  Still, Jaclyn had said she’d seen a gray-haired man driving a gray, or silver, car. That gave him a little bit to go on, if nothing else panned out.

  The problem with this case wasn’t a shortage of suspects, but too damn many. Almost everyone who had dealt with the victim evidently had some kind of grudge against her.

  Garvey yawned, then hauled his ass up from the edge of Eric’s desk. “We both need some sleep,” he said, scrubbing a paw across his face and making a sandpaper sound. “My lovely bride is going to be pissed as hell at me, anyway. She wanted me to make sergeant so I wouldn’t have any more of these late nights, and now here I am, doing them anyway.”

  Garvey always referred to his wife of fourteen years as his lovely bride, which sounded sweet, but Eric had met Garvey’s wife and thought he probably called her that out of fear. She was a short, slightly plump, deceptively pleasant-faced woman who ran the Garvey household like a drill sergeant. Once Garvey had even bought a gag tag for his car that read “I LIVE WITH FEAR (but sometimes she lets me go fishing).” He’d bought it as a joke, but Mrs. Garvey had liked it and insisted he actually put it on his car. He’d endured a lot of teasing over that tag, which he’d been forced to keep until he’d traded cars and “accidentally” forgot to get the tag off his old car.

  On the other hand, they’d been married for fourteen years, so maybe the trick to a successful marriage for a cop was to marry someone who could kick ass and take names. She had certainly kept Garvey straight.

  Eric got up, too, because there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could accomplish at this hour. “Give her a kiss for me,” he said, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to be on Mrs. Garvey’s good side.

  “Bullshit. Kiss her yourself, if you have the balls.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  JACLYN DRAGGED HERSELF OUT OF BED EARLY THE NEXT morning, watched a few minutes of the local news—no new developments in Carrie’s murder, which meant no one had been arrested and this whole nightmare would dissolve like a soap bubble. Madelyn had stayed until after midnight, simultaneously trying to comfort her while at the same time hashing and rehashing everything that had been said and done at the reception hall that afternoon, which kind of canceled ou
t the comforting part. But no matter what either of them thought, or how upset they were, the show—in this case, two wedding rehearsals that night, plus handling the details of the five weddings coming up over the next three days—must go on, meaning she had to get her butt out of bed and down to the office.

  She was still worried about being questioned as a suspect in Carrie’s murder; what sane person wouldn’t be? But what could she do about it? She couldn’t go out investigating, trying to find the real killer on her own, because she didn’t know the first thing about investigating crimes; that was Eric’s job, and the best thing she could do was pray that he was really, really good at it.

  Coming to terms with the fact that he was doing his job by investigating her would take a while longer.

  In fact, she might as well get over her hurt, get over him, and write him off. They’d spent the night together, but to men that was no big deal, and despite all her pep talks to herself about being cautious and not letting herself get too involved, the fact remained that she’d let herself expect too much. Now, no matter how she tried to reason herself out of how she felt, she didn’t know if they’d be able to start over. For that matter, he might not be interested in starting over. He might think that, if she was the type of person he could even momentarily suspect was a killer, then she wasn’t the type of woman he wanted to get involved with. If so, she couldn’t fault him for feeling that way, because it was how she’d feel.

  She ate a few bites of cereal straight from the box, but the corn flakes tasted like sawdust and she made a face as she put the box back in the cabinet. Maybe she’d make do with coffee this morning. Her stomach, and her nerves, were too jittery for food.

  The phone rang while she was getting dressed and she leaped for it, grabbing it up without even checking the caller ID.