Defensive Wounds

by Lisa Black

  “Him.” Coral still refrained from speaking the boy’s name, only that venomous pronoun. “That woman put him on the stand, and the prosecution couldn’t shake him. He answered every question with ‘I don’t remember,’ pretending to look sad, on and on until the jury began to feel sorry for him. My daughter is dead, but she’s away and out of sight and he’s there, see? They brought in every girl in their class, all these sweet young girls who said he was such a nice cub and would never hurt anyone. Even Jenna’s friends didn’t believe he could have done it—another reason they stopped talking to me.”

  “He didn’t give any sort of explanation at all?”

  “She did.” Apparently Marie Corrigan could not be named within the Simone household either. “She took just what I was talking about—how Jenna didn’t have a steady boyfriend but boys would ask her out all the time. She tracked down every boy Jenna had dated since grade school and called them to the stand. Nice boys who were only trying to help, who said how much they liked Jenna. When she ran out of them, she called in boys who had wanted to go out with Jenna.”

  “Why?”

  “To turn my daughter into some sort of fatal attraction. She stood there with that fake sad expression, as if commiserating with their loss, but then twisted their words, reminding the jury how ‘popular’ Jenna was—by which she meant ‘loose,’ anyone could see that—as if Jenna toyed with every boy in three counties and tossed them aside like candy wrappers.”

  “Phantom suspects.”

  “Exactly. She invented this jealous beau who followed Jenna to that house, killed her, and left.”

  “The bushy-haired stranger.”

  Coral paused. “What?”

  “An industry term, named after Sam Sheppard’s phantom assailant. It’s a standard defense strategy: Some other dude did it.”

  Another boy, pursuing Jenna, sees her leave with William and follows. Two intoxicated teenagers probably didn’t lock the front door behind them, so he goes in, and—It sounded ridiculous, but within the realm of possibility. Teenage hormones ran pretty strong, and it would explain the missing murder weapon. “There were no injuries to William?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  “Was he really that drunk? Or … incapacitated?”

  Coral gave her a grim smile. “Impossible to tell. The estate lawyer arrived about the same time as the police did. He didn’t give a statement or any body samples for over forty-eight hours.”

  Theresa nodded. “By which time everything could have metabolized. And they never came up with this mysterious jealous suitor.”

  Coral snorted, which turned into a sneeze. “Of course not. He didn’t exist. No, he fooled everyone. He fooled Jenna. He will fool your daughter.” She fixed Theresa with a stare. “You have to get her away from him. Now. This instant.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Where does she work? Where is he?”

  “What would you do if I told you?” Theresa asked, as gently as possible, mincing her way across this minefield.

  An unholy smirk lifted a corner of the woman’s mouth, but it looked more like a snarl. “What do you think I’m going to do, sneak up behind him and blow his head off? Believe me, I dream of that every night. Unfortunately, I don’t own a gun, and if I did, I would have done it as he walked out of that courthouse. No, I just want to monitor him, as I said.”

  Theresa leaned against the bedpost. “I’m so sorry, Coral. But if you go to my daughter’s workplace and tell them about William, she’ll never forgive me. Give me some time to fix this—at least let me get her out of the way first. If he’s pushed, I don’t know what he’ll do, and I don’t want her to be in the middle of it when he does.”

  “You need to tell me where he is.”

  “I will. As soon as I convince my daughter to get away from him—and stay away. Then I’ll tell you.”

  Coral’s gaze never wavered. “You promise?”

  It took a few seconds, but Theresa said, “I promise.”

  Coral was a fellow mother, a grieving mother, a woman who’d had more tragedy in the past few years than most people had in a few lifetimes. So why did Theresa feel as if she’d just made a pact with the devil?

  Coral gave a casual and unconvincing shrug. “I can’t do anything anyway. I can’t even inform his employer of his criminal record, legally, since it was a juvenile case and sealed. I just want to tell him that someone’s paying attention to what he’s doing. I want him to know I’m going to dog him until the end of my days.”

  “You don’t think that might be dangerous?”

  “The concept of danger only applies to people who have something to lose,” Coral said.

  The doorbell rang, startling them both.

  Her host exclaimed, “Oh, my gosh. They’re here already.”

  “Who is?”

  But Coral Simone rushed into the hallway and flew down the stairs with swift, sure feet. “And I’m not even dressed yet.”

  Theresa followed, to watch from a careful distance at the bottom of the stairs as the door was flung open to reveal three other ladies: a younger woman of about thirty with an athlete’s body and a HANG TEN SURF SHOP T-shirt; a birdlike, gray-haired one in a yellow turtleneck; and a tall, African-American matron whose face and body were all jutting angles underneath a widow’s peak. She carried a plate of muffins that smelled delectable, and she wore a brooch made out of magnetic poetry squares. They were, as Theresa learned from the flurry of conversation and explanations, there for a support-group meeting, but they had plenty of time, dear, don’t worry. Each one seemed sweet and caring.

  “This is Theresa,” Coral said with one foot on the steps, unbuttoning her jersey cardigan to reveal a pink T-shirt.

  “Is she joining the group?” the younger one asked, showing no enthusiasm for the idea of a new member.

  “Not yet,” Coral said.

  Theresa asked, “Group?”

  “Families of Murder Victims,” Coral explained.

  Not yet?

  Theresa returned to her car, late for work, sucking in the fresh spring air and thanking God that her own daughter was home asleep and temporarily safe, praying that she would never have need of a support group. Any kind of support group, but especially that one.

  However.

  Coral’s pink T-shirt had triggered a memory. The woman had looked familiar, and at first Theresa thought that she might have seen Coral’s picture in the newspaper articles, but now she recalled that the articles didn’t have any photos of the family. She had seen Coral, though, and in pink.

  She’d been wearing a pink twinset, having tea in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton on the day Marie Corrigan was found dead.

  CHAPTER 30

  *

  “I figured I’d find you here,” Don said, flicking on the lights.

  “I needed to think.”

  “And what better place?” He dropped his lanky frame into the seat beside her and stuck his too-large feet far out in front of him, deceptively casual. “The old teaching amphitheater. A table we made out of an autopsy table, a chalkboard, windows blacked out for video presentations, tile that’s had so much spilled blood seep into its pores that it couldn’t possibly hold any more, the smells wafting in from the autopsy suite next door. Perfect.”

  “I would prefer the meditation garden,” she admitted. “Except we don’t have one.”

  “What’s the matter, kiddo?”

  “My daughter’s dating a rapist and murderer.”

  “Oh, okay. I thought it was something serious.”

  “This kid is let go, starts over, tries to leave his past behind him. No arrests, gets a job. But then his ex-lawyer is murdered and possibly raped. Why would he want to kill the woman who set him free?”

  “She kept him out of jail. That doesn’t mean she gave him everything he wanted.”

  Theresa turned to look at him. “You think he was physically attracted to her and she rejected him?”

  “Super-hot older chi
ck whose temporary mission in life is to take care of him? Clients fall in love with their therapist, their doctor, their priest. Why not their lawyer?”

  “Only people who can’t distinguish between professional and personal interest.”

  “Or, in the case of a horny teenager, don’t care.”

  Theresa slumped further, until the rigid wooden back of the theater seat dug into her back. “That’s just what I’ve been thinking. He falls for her, but when the case is over, she’s on to other things. Then the convention comes to his hotel and he sees her again. Who better to filch a passkey to the Presidential Suite, and who needs the extra clout of a laid-out hotel room than an insecure teen? But Marie’s surrounded by her peers and has bigger fish to fillet than some gawky ex-client. She rejects him, just as Jenna did, and winds up the same way.”

  “And this would possibly be known as justice.”

  “No … if the world were just, he’d be in jail where he belongs and my daughter would never have met him.”

  Don put an arm around her shoulders, which comforted her a little more than it should have. The things we won’t admit.

  “There’s only one problem,” Theresa continued.

  “Bruce Raffel.”

  “There’s no connection between him and William Rosedale. He and Marie did not work at the same firm when Jenna was murdered. Maybe it’s the same motive we thought of with Dennis Britton—that Bruce and Marie were reconnecting, only it was William who got jealous. But how would he even know that? And why kill Bruce a day later?”

  “He blames Bruce Raffel for causing him to kill Marie. ‘She wanted you instead of me, angering me, so I killed her. So that’s really your fault, of course, because I’m a sociopath and nothing is ever my fault.’ Has your cousin checked his alibi?”

  “I’m sure it’s going to be tough when the kid works there and our time of death is ‘sometime during the evening.’ I don’t know if anyone has even asked him for an alibi. There’s no official reason to consider him a suspect. They questioned all the staff, but not in a stringent way.”

  “Sans rubber hose?”

  “It’s a hotel. There are multiple entrances, windows, staff in and out twenty-four hours a day. A bunch of kids use the observation deck as a smoking lounge, and no one seems to care.”

  “Okay.” Don sighed in sympathy. “What does the evidence say?”

  “That the victims didn’t see it coming. That somebody had a key to the Presidential Suite and isn’t saying. After that, all I’ve got is two human hairs, two cat hairs, three fibers, and a smear of wax.”

  “And no other suspects?”

  “They’re lawyers. Everybody hates them.”

  “Harsh.”

  She’d met a new suspect only that morning. Surely Coral Simone had more motive to kill Marie Corrigan than William Rosedale had, and Theresa felt fairly sure she’d seen Coral on the premises.

  Except that Coral apparently didn’t know that William worked there, would have no access to the Presidential Suite, and would need a dose of Benadryl if she found herself in the same room with a gray Persian. Coral had no connection to Bruce Raffel, and Marie Corrigan would be unlikely to turn her back on her.

  “Any one of these masses stand out?” Don asked.

  “One.” Theresa sighed. “Unfortunately, he’s a cop.”

  “Double harsh.”

  CHAPTER 31

  *

  “DNA,” Marcus Dean said with a face of stone. “You want my DNA.”

  “Yes,” Theresa said.

  Neil Kelly sat beside her in Dean’s office. He swallowed hard and said, “This is the best way. Your DNA clears you, and any brief, shadowy suspicion is over. If we ignore it, it’ll become the elephant in the room.”

  “It will stand there forever if I’m immortalized in an evidence inventory. Even if you catch the real guy, his defense attorney will jump on that: ‘The cops thought one of their own did it—that’s how little they know.’ You’ll be screwing your own case.”

  “Not if we collect it as an elimination sample,” Theresa said. “It’s not officially evidence and doesn’t need to be entered as such, and it won’t be added to any database. As long as it doesn’t match, it’s discarded and your privacy is protected like any other citizen’s. It’s the best course for you.”

  “Yeah,” Dean scoffed.

  “Yes,” she insisted. As long as you didn’t do it.

  Neil said nothing. He had not wanted to do this; she’d had to talk him into it, using the same argument. Cops tread very, very lightly when it came to suspecting other cops. That kind of situation never turned out well for anyone. Theresa didn’t care too much about the weight of her footsteps at the moment, though.

  But then Dean sighed, slumped back. “Tell you what, let me talk this over with my old partner here.”

  “Of course,” she said. “No hurry.”

  The two men stood and left the room. He probably wanted to ask Neil how serious the suspicion of him had gotten, maybe what kind of protection he could expect from the Fraternal Order of Police union. None, she would guess, assuming that the free legal representation ended when the job did.

  Restless, she paced a bit, then stopped to study three framed photographs on top of a filing cabinet. They seemed to be the only personal items in the room. In one, a small boy and girl grinned from a pile of Christmas wrapping paper, a lit tree in the background. Judging by the aging of the photo’s color, it might date to Marcus’s childhood. Another one showed two young men on a basketball court; one was definitely Marcus, before he’d decided to shave his head. The third was of a young woman with two small children, leaning against a car. This one had less dust on it than the other two. The woman had long black hair with a widow’s peak, huge almond-shaped eyes, and a wide smile. A piece of paper beneath this photo served as a doily. In italic font a poem described the sharp and twisting pain of grief. “With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief. Till then I wander carefull, comfortlesse, In secret sorrow, and sad pensivenesse.” Spenser.

  “Hey!”

  Theresa nearly dropped the picture. Rachael’s boss, Karla, stood in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry—” Theresa began.

  “I wanted to tell you I really appreciate Rachael coming in today. Almost half my staff is out with mysterious illnesses—which means they’re afraid of the bogeyman. Some of them can barely write their names, but they’re highly attuned to their own emotional state. I swear none of them have any concept of what it means to work for a living.”

  Theresa stammered, “Rachael’s … she’s here?”

  “I had to call her in, I was desperate. The lawyers have given up pretending to have a conference and are checking out in droves, tails firmly tucked between their legs. I guess they’re only tough when inside a courtroom. I swear they whine more than the kids I got working for me.”

  “Rachael’s here?”

  Karla nodded, the expression on her face turning odd as Theresa repeated herself. “On the front desk. What are you doing in here, by the way? Are you waiting for Marcus?”

  Theresa rushed past her, down the hallway and around the corner. She didn’t see Neil or Marcus Dean anywhere, and the blond girl at the desk was not her daughter.

  Nor did the blond know exactly where her daughter had gone. “She’s on break. She’ll be back in about ten minutes.”

  “Where would she have gone?”

  The young woman paused in trying to explain to a portly attorney from Des Moines that the pay-per-view charges to his bill could not be removed simply because he had passed out from the Jack Daniel’s before he got past the opening credits. “I dunno, the ladies’ room? Why don’t you just wait here for her? She’ll be back in ten. Rachael’s real good about that.”

  Theresa checked the ladies’ room, beautifully appointed in gleaming white, and the other offices around the lobby. No Rachael. She returned to the front desk, where the man began to point out that he had only been drinking to cope with
the loss of two of his colleagues, swallowed up by the hotel’s murderer.

  “And the triple X movie?” the girl asked. “Was that to help you cope, too?”

  “What’s your name? I want to speak to your manager.”

  “Where else would she have gone?” Theresa demanded.

  “Kristin, and you can talk to my manager all you want. She won’t take the charges off either,” the girl was telling the man, then added to Theresa while waving toward the elevator bank, “I don’t know. She headed that way, I think.”

  Theresa thanked her and walked to the elevator, looking through the throng of people for Rachael without finding her. Karla had not exaggerated, and the lobby teemed with attorneys. Theresa hated to be harsh and think of the phrase “rats leaving a sinking ship,” but she couldn’t help it. Besides, why shouldn’t rats leave a sinking ship? Wouldn’t that be the logical thing to do?

  William worked in the kitchen—perhaps Rachael had not been able to resist the temptation for a fresh look at the boy she now knew so much more about. That would be just like her. Theresa walked the fifteen feet to the Muse’s doors, but they were locked, too early for the lunch service. She gave up and went to the elevator, flipping open her cell phone. Rachael had probably gone either down to the mall or up to the tower; Theresa would simply call her. She wondered if it were legal to have a GPS chip implanted in one’s offspring.

  But the phone rang before she could dial, and she answered as the doors closed behind her.

  “Mom?”

  It was her daughter.

  And she sounded terrified.

  The elevator began to move, interfering with the precious reception bars, and the call dissolved into static. “… observation de—William …”

  Silence. “Rachael? Rachael!”

  One last sputter. “Help m—”

  Then nothing.

  Theresa retained enough presence of mind to press the button for the forty-second floor.

  CHAPTER 32

  *

  The doors opened, and she plunged into the all-black, crumbling room under renovation, nearly tripping over a five-gallon bucket of topping compound, and headed for the opening door to the observation rooms. A dark figure loomed up, filling the archway.