Kill and Run (A Thorny Rose Mystery Book 1)

by Lauren Carr

“Maybe that he knew of.”

  “Maybe Jane …” Carrying Irving in her arms, Cameron rushed back into the bedroom. Dropping Irving onto the bed, she opened her laptop case and reached into the folder section to remove the case file.

  “Jane who?” Jessica followed her into the room.

  Hurrying out of the room, Irving came to a sudden halt when he came face to face with Spencer who had followed the new scent in her home.

  Upon seeing the intruder, the young dog jumped up into the air and landed in the corner of the sitting room with a yelp.

  Keeping his eyes on the possible threat with long blue fur, Irving puffed up with every strand of his long fur on point and hissed. Keeping his back arched upward, he bounced on all four feet to the top of the stairs.

  Remembering that she was a dog, which put her above the feline in the animal kingdom, Spencer shifted gears to change her yelps to barks and gave chase.

  “Spencer, no!” Jessica ran out of the bedroom. She dove for Spencer a moment too late.

  The chase was on.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Irving turned right and scurried as fast as his paws could carry him through the open doorway into the guest bedroom. In the middle of the room, he leapt to fly up onto the bed. With one bounce, he hit the nightstand, where he zigged around a photograph before returning to the bed. He ended up on the headboard.

  To Irving’s surprise, Spencer, who was a fraction of Admiral’s weight and much younger, had no trouble taking flight. After Irving reached the headboard, he found his options minimalized and the young dog snapping at his tail from directly beneath him.

  “Spencer! Bad dog!” Jessica scooped the pup up into her arms and carried her out of the room. “Cameron, I am so sorry.” She took the squirming sheltie down the hallway where she locked her inside the master bedroom.

  “That’s okay,” Cameron replied. “I didn’t realize Irving would be such a problem.” She felt a broken picture frame crumble under her foot when she reached across the bed to retrieve Irving from the headboard. “Oh, man!” She cursed. Irving had broken someone’s picture. Kneeling down to the floor, she turned over the picture to observe the two women in army dress uniforms.

  “We’ll keep Spencer in the bedroom until she settles down,” Jessica said upon coming back into the room. She stopped when she saw Cameron staring at the picture in her hand. “Are you okay?”

  “This picture frame broke,” Cameron said in a low voice. “Who is this?”

  “That’s Izzy’s mother and aunt,” Jessica said. “Izzy is the girl whose mother was killed day before yesterday. So sad.” She knelt down to the floor to pick up the broken glass.

  “Her mother was murdered … the other day?”

  “Yes.” Jessica stood up to take the broken picture frame from Cameron only to find her holding onto it.

  Cameron asked, “Which one was her mother?”

  Jessica pointed at the picture of the younger woman, Donna Crenshaw.

  “Who is the other one?” Cameron asked. “The one with the curly hair.”

  “Her aunt,” Jessica asked. “Why?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t think I caught it.” Jessica corrected herself. “Cecelia. Why?”

  Cameron held up the picture for Jessica to see. Pointing at the picture of Cecelia, she said, “This woman is Jane Doe. The woman who died in Nick’s arms—the one he was trying to identify when he was murdered.”

  In his office, Murphy was having trouble concentrating on the words in the forensics reports from the crime scene investigators.

  More often than not, Murphy would raise his eyes from the reports to watch Izzy where she was playing with her iPad at his conference table. It took all of his control not to interrogate her about her life with the woman who had raised her—who had lied about being her mother.

  Boris was right. It would be simpler to run her DNA through the database to locate her parents or at least a member of her birth family.

  Forcing himself to concentrate on the reports before him, Murphy continued reading through the witness statements of Francine Baxter’s neighbors.

  No one saw or heard anything … or maybe someone had.

  Each of the victim’s cars had been found parked around the cul-de-sac. Hannah Price’s black Porsche was parked in the townhouse driveway. She probably arrived first. Maureen Clark drove a white SUV, which was parked in front. Colleen Davis’ blue Mini Cooper was parked behind Maureen’s vehicle. Donna Crenshaw drove an eight year old black SUV, which was parked in front of the townhouse next door to the Baxter home.

  At various points during the evening, one neighbor or another had seen one or more of the women arrive. One neighbor arriving home from work had even seen Colleen Davis and Maureen Clark arrive at the same time and walk up the steep steps to the front door together.

  No one heard anything.

  The last witness statement Murphy read caused him to catch his breath.

  Eighty year old Eileen Jones, a retired school teacher, lived alone in the townhome directly across the cul-de-sac from Francine Baxter. Eileen had taken her Yorkie for a walk right before her bedtime—at ten-thirty in the evening. As she was leaving her home, she saw a green Volkswagen pull around the cul-de-sac and park along the curb almost directly in front of her house. Eileen and her dog were no more than twenty-feet from the maroon-haired young woman when she got out of her vehicle and practically ran directly across the road to knock on Francine Baxter’s door.

  Later, when Eileen returned from walking her dog, she heard a door slam and saw the same woman running back to her car. She could see that the maroon-haired woman was sobbing when she got into her car and sped so fast out of the townhouse development that she actually drove her green Volkswagen up onto the curb.

  “She was extremely upset,” Eileen said in her statement. “No doubt about that. I thought she was one of Dr. Baxter’s students and that she had flunked her—never occurred to me that she found all of those women massacred. Why didn’t she call the police?”

  Good question.

  Murphy took note of the time. Ten-thirty. Approximately two hours after Donna Crenshaw’s estimated time of death.

  Emily Dolan actually went inside Francine Baxter’s home. She had to have found the bodies. According to Eileen’s statement, it takes her approximately ten minutes to walk her dog, which means Emily Dolan was in the townhouse longer than it took for her to discover the bodies.

  What was she doing in the house for ten minutes? She would have instantly found the bodies. Why didn’t she call the police? Was it simply because she didn’t trust them?

  Going to his laptop, Murphy did a search for Starbucks at Seven Corners Shopping Center in Falls Church, Virginia. The café closed at nine o’clock. The overturned tanker had stranded a lot of people that night. Most likely, Emily didn’t make the meeting because she had been called into work to cover for employees who couldn’t get through the traffic jam.

  Not only did she miss the meeting, but she dodged a bullet, too—literally.

  “Do you know who killed my mom yet?”

  Murphy looked up from the statement to see Izzy’s big light brown eyes peering at him from over the top of her iPad.

  “Not yet, but we’re making progress,” he answered. “I’m not doing this alone. Everyone you met today is working hard to find out what happened.”

  “I know.” She returned to her iPad.

  Murphy laid down the report in the center of his desk. “Are you bored?”

  “Very.” Dropping her tablet on top of the table, she sat up, then paused when Perry knocked on the doorframe to Murphy’s office.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve got a problem.”

  In one day, Izzy had learned the drill. While Murphy followed Perry down the hallway to the conference room, she had to gather her things to g
o to the break room. As a visitor, she was unable to stay alone in his office.

  As Murphy approached the conference room, he could hear the voices of those inside growing louder. Two he recognized as Special Agent Susan Archer and Boris Hamilton trying unsuccessfully to be the calm voice of reason.

  “That answer is not acceptable!”

  Murphy recognized by the booming tone that the center of the problem was either a marine or an army officer—someone who had been trained to lead based on the strength of his voice.

  When Perry led him through the doorway, Murphy saw that he was right.

  Standing at the head of the conference table, a tall, muscular man in the green uniform of the army—a silver eagle on both his left and right shoulders denoting his rank of colonel— was waving his hand at Boris Hamilton. A pen dangling between his fingers, he demanded, “I want to speak to the lead investigator in this case!”

  Assuming an at-ease stance with his hands folded behind his back, Murphy announced, “That would be me, Colonel.”

  The army officer whirled around on his heels and fired off a glare across the room. With the hand holding the pen, he rubbed his lips while measuring up the navy lieutenant.

  “I’m Lieutenant Murphy Thornton, United States Navy, appointed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to lead in this investigation of the murders at Francine Baxter’s home in Reston, Virginia. And you are …”

  “Colonel Lincoln Clark, United States Army. Maureen Clark was my wife.” After stepping across the room to Murphy, he brought his face close to his. “I serve on the National Security Council Staff as director for Strategic Capabilities Policy and work very closely with General Sebastian Graham. I assume you know who he is.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Maureen and I are personal friends of the general,” the colonel said. “We are regular visitors to his home. Her murder has been a horrible blow not just to me and our five year old son, but to the Grahams as well.”

  “I am very sorry for your loss, Colonel,” Murphy said, “and—”

  “If you’re so sorry,” Colonel Clark roared, “why are you not out there looking for her killer instead of invading my family’s privacy?”

  “One of the most effective ways to identify a killer is to understand his victims,” Murphy said. “Unfortunately, the best way to do that is to ask probing—even embarrassing—questions.”

  “I’ve answered enough of your staffs’ questions, now I want some answers of my own!” Colonel Clark yelled while waving the hand dangling a pen.

  As volatile and loud as Colonel Clark was, Murphy was calm and soft spoken. “Certainly,” he replied, “what questions do you have?”

  “How old are you?”

  Murphy smirked at the colonel’s attempt to intimidate him. “How is my age relevant to your wife’s murder?”

  “I’m willing to bet I have socks older than you,” Colonel Clark said with a sneer. “Have you ever investigated a murder before, boy?”

  “Yes, I have.” The colonel didn’t need to know that Murphy’s previous experience had been unofficial.

  “What suspects do you have?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t answer that.” When Colonel Clark scoffed, Murphy asked, “When you were in Iraq, during your three tours before returning state-side, did you publicize the information that your team collected about the enemy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?” Murphy’s face was filled with childlike innocence.

  Colonel Clark stuttered before answering, “You know damn well why not. Then the enemy would know what we knew about them and be able to anticipate our next move and how we would proceed.”

  The corners of Murphy’s lips kicked up to reveal a hint of his dimples. “Just like you and your people were doing in Iraq, my team and I are doing here. We’re fighting a war against a killer who took out your wife and four other women. The best ammunition we have in this war is every bit of information that we can gather about each one of our victims in order to understand why and how these casualties came about. It’s not pleasant, but then, no war is. And some of the questions that we may be asking may not make sense to you, but like your people on the front lines had to trust that you knew what you were doing, I have to ask you to trust my team.”

  Colonel Clark looked around the room at each agent in the room. Murphy’s calmness had its desired effect. If he continued raging, then he would appear to be a hysterical family victim, which was the last thing he would want reported back to his superiors.

  “If there’s a problem, now would be the time to discuss it,” Murphy prompted him.

  “My DNA is already in the military database,” Colonel Clark said.

  With a nod of his head, Murphy acknowledged that he was aware of this. “Every active duty member of the military has his or her DNA listed in the database to help with identification if the worst was to happen.”

  “But you have no reason to need my son’s DNA.”

  “Actually, we do,” Murphy said. “It can help to exclude evidence that might be found at the crime scene.”

  “He was never at this Baxter woman’s home,” Colonel Clark said, “so his DNA won’t be found there.”

  “Actually, it’s already there.” When Colonel Clark opened his mouth, Murphy raised his hand to silence him. “Transference of forensic evidence. Your wife Maureen, after feeding your son macaroni and cheese for dinner, decided to take a couple of minutes to brush your Himalayan cat—getting cat hair on her pants and shirt. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to remove every single strand of that hair. Then, she bathed your son and put him in his pajamas while you sipped your vodka martini. At that point, he transferred epidermal particles from his skin to the front of Maureen’s shirt when he splashed bathwater and soap onto her. While you were having your second cocktail to help ease your nerves from giving up smoking, Maureen helped your son to brush his teeth, getting cast off from the brush, barely noticeable, but enough for forensics to pick up the toothpaste. Her clothes had minute odor of the macaroni and cheese he ate for dinner.” He leaned in to whisper to the stunned general “Kraft by the way. My favorite too, when I was your son’s age. And the scent of the lasagna as well, with minute traces of the parmesan cheese and the sauce also on her sleeves. When you kissed her good-bye, you left your DNA and minute traces of the vodka martini on her lips.”

  The conference room was filled with stunned silence.

  “All of that evidence from your family and home was on Maureen when she went to Francine Baxter’s house,” Murphy explained. “When she sat down on Francine Baxter’s chair, the hair from your cat caught on the chair. As a result, your cat’s DNA is in the Baxter home, even though the cat has never been there. Maureen brought it in. That is transference.”

  Finally, Colonel Clark spoke, “I gave up smoking … how did—”

  “You may have made it through nicotine withdrawal, but the psychological effects are still there,” Murphy said. “You’ve been holding onto that pen and waving it around like a cigarette. When I introduced myself, you almost took a drag on it—until you remembered that it wasn’t a cigarette.”

  Seemingly speechless, Colonel Clark nodded his head.

  “We need your son’s DNA in order to exclude any evidence found at the scene that Maureen may have brought in from your home,” Murphy said.

  Colonel Clark stared at Murphy.

  “Please, sir,” Murphy said.

  Colonel Clark swallowed. “No.”

  Not sure if he heard him right, Murphy said, “Pardon me, sir.”

  “No, you can’t have it.” Colonel Clark hurried past Murphy toward the open doorway. Pausing, he turned around. “Maureen is gone. But our son is still here. I know how the military and Department of Defense works. Once his DNA gets into the system, then NSA and our government will be tracking him like a wild
animal for the rest of his life. As long as we have some rights left, I’m going to protect our privacy with everything I’ve got.”

  Colonel Lincoln Clark hurried out of the conference room, leaving Murphy, Boris Hamilton, Susan Archer, and Perry Latimore in stunned disbelief.

  “That … was weird,” Susan said. “You would think—”

  “How did you know he drank two vodka martinis while Maureen Clark put a leftover lasagna in the oven for him the night she died?” Perry asked Murphy. “We only just got the forensics report. You couldn’t have gotten all that. I mean, the martini—”

  “I smelled the vodka on his breath,” Murphy said.

  “From two days ago?” Perry asked.

  “From lunch today,” Murphy said. “So I made a calculated guess that vodka martini was his drink. I did read about the cat hair on Baxter’s chair and Maureen’s clothes. That told me that the Clarks have a cat. Knowing the age of their son and seeing what type of man Lincoln Clark was, I speculated about what she would have done before leaving the house to go to Baxter’s place that evening.”

  Boris chuckled. “Based on the look on Clark’s face, your surmising was right on target.”

  Pleased with himself, Murphy shrugged his shoulders with a grin. “What can I say? I’ve learnt from the best.”

  “You look like Dad when he’d come home after a long day of getting nowhere,” Tristan announced from where he was lounging on the back of the black motorcycle when Murphy climbed out of his SUV after parking it in the garage.

  After a quick hello and the bumping of fists with Tristan, Izzy threw open the door to the rec room to find Spencer waiting on the other side. “Hell-o, Blue! Did you have a good day today?”

  Spencer answered by jumping into her arms and licking her mouth.

  “Let’s go see what Newman’s watching.” Carrying Spencer in her arms, Izzy raced up the stairs.

  Sipping a beer, Tristan watched Murphy stop to stretch his arms up over his head and arch his back. After picking up his tablet from the back seat, Murphy moved around the back of the SUV and stepped over to where Tristan was balancing the beer bottle between his crotch and the bike’s gas tank while testing out the feel of Murphy’s sport motorcycle. “If you like it so much, why don’t you buy one? It isn’t like you can’t afford it. Or maybe you can get really wild and crazy and buy a car.”