Imperious

by C. M. Sutter

  Jack sat on a guest chair and reviewed Naomi’s file. A minute later, the door to the autopsy room swung open. “You can go on back.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  Jack entered the cold room outfitted with stainless steel equipment. The victim lay on a washing table, and Lena had temporarily draped a white sheet over her body. Jack noticed her wet hair. “Sorry to interrupt, but what have you got so far?”

  “Poor thing. She was such a tiny girl, just over one hundred pounds. Upon a visual exam, I haven’t seen a COD yet. I haven’t felt any head wounds under her hair, and she doesn’t have anything jammed down her throat. I’ll have to finish cleaning her thoroughly to see if I can locate any puncture wounds, but all of these insect and animal bites are going to make it difficult.”

  “No visible signs of a wound could mean poison like the others.”

  “It certainly can, and I’ll send the blood samples to the lab immediately. This is obviously a homicide, Jack. I’d like to check her stomach contents as soon as I can.”

  Jack tipped his head toward a table near the wall. “I want to show you the description of Naomi Hahn given to me by her mother.” They walked to the back of the room, where he opened the folder and handed his notes to Lena.

  “Identifying features—black shoulder-length straight hair, green eyes, a scar on her left elbow from a bicycle injury when she was a kid, a tattoo of a green four-leaf clover on her right ankle, and fillings in two of her top left molars.” Lena walked to the body. “Luckily rigor is subsiding.” She lifted the arm of the deceased and checked the elbow with a magnifying glass. “I see a scar that looks like it had been stitched, and we already know she has a clover on her ankle.” Lena used a mouth mirror to check for fillings. She turned to Jack. “Two on the top left.”

  “Okay, I’ll give the parents a call and hopefully get their permission for an autopsy. I’ll let you know as soon as they tell me, one way or another.”

  Jack took the two flights of stairs back to the bull pen and dropped into his office chair. The email had arrived. He bypassed the employment files for the moment and clicked on the photos. On the screen in front of him was the same photo Mike Morton had used on his UWWC biography.

  “Arrogant son of a bitch.” Jack grabbed a pen and paper.

  I have to connect the dots. So Mike Morton and Martin Glover are one and the same. His UWWC bio said he wasn’t married, but clearly, he was. So what happened to the wife?

  He squeezed his head between his palms. “There’s too much here for one person to figure out.” Jack tapped his contact list, scrolled to Donnelly’s cell number, then pressed the green call symbol.

  Donnelly picked up immediately. “Hello, sir.”

  “Are you guys at the location?”

  “We just exited our cars and began walking the shoulder.”

  “Okay, good.” Jack jotted down more thoughts as he talked. “How much help do you really need out there?”

  “One or two people should be fine.”

  “Okay, then tell Amber and Kate to head back. I need them here.”

  “You got it, Boss.”

  “And, Donnelly.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Find that cigarette butt. It’s crucial to this case.”

  Chapter 54

  Jack made the difficult call to Mr. and Mrs. Hahn and asked them to come to the sheriff’s office right away. He glanced through the glass wall when Amber and Kate entered the bull pen.

  “What’s up, Boss?” Amber asked.

  “We need answers now. I have no doubt that the female from the woods is Naomi Hahn, and her folks are on their way. While they’re here, I want both of you to work in the conference room and establish time lines, causes of death, and the evidence we have, beginning with Becca and through Naomi. Find everything you can about the girls, bullet point your notes, and put something together. There’s a common factor between all of them that gave Morton a reason to kill them, so work on that too. The families want to bury their loved ones, the press is demanding answers, and the community wants to feel safe. Write down what we’ve done that has moved this case forward and what we still need to do. It turns out that Mike Morton and Martin Glover are the same person. I don’t know what that’s telling us other than he’s changed his identity yet still uses his real name for certain things. A woman from UWM called back and said they’ve never had a chemistry professor named Mike Morton. She did say that they had a tenured couple named Martin and Isabelle Glover, but the wife just up and disappeared one day on a camping trip. Gossip about foul play surfaced due to rumors of infidelity on Isabelle’s part, and several months later, Martin quit. She thought the rumors tarnished his sterling career, but he said he only wanted to fulfill their dreams of moving to the Virgin Islands.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen, and his bio said he was unmarried.”

  “That’s right, Kate, so find out what you can on Isabelle Glover. See if you can track down her location while I talk with Naomi’s parents.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Two tenured professors giving up those kind of jobs? That already raises a red flag with me.”

  “Exactly. Why would anyone leave that kind of job to come to North Bend and start over? I want to know what he’s hiding.”

  “Which one is his real name?” Amber asked.

  “Not sure, but I’m leaning toward it being Martin Glover. He must have fake credentials for his alias. Gather every note you’ve taken so far, your laptop, a couple of legal pads, and head to the conference room. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve finished talking to Mr. and Mrs. Hahn.” Jack answered his ringing phone, said he’d be right out, and hung up. “Okay, they’re here. Jan is going to forward all incoming calls to the conference room while I’m with Naomi’s parents. I’m counting on you two. Dig deep.”

  Jack rolled his neck then headed to the reception area, where the couple was waiting. He reached out with a handshake. “Mr. and Mrs. Hahn, let’s talk in my office.”

  “Do you have news of Naomi’s whereabouts?”

  “I do, Mrs. Hahn.” Jack opened his office door and pointed at the guest chairs. “Have a seat.”

  Chapter 55

  Amber and I sat at the table. She took notes while I entered information into my laptop. I had several tabs open that showed newspaper articles dated two years back about interviews with Martin Glover. His wife, a fellow professor at UWM, had vanished. The cops were suspicious, but his story never wavered. They were home by four thirty that Thursday before spring break and, with a week off, had plans to hike, camp, and fish at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo. In his statement to police, he said his wife, Isabelle, often hiked alone. As a botany professor, she liked to observe the plant life everywhere they went, and on that last day, she never returned to the campsite. In his account, he insisted they were deeply in love, had no marital problems, and planned on retiring to the US Virgin Islands one day. The search for Isabelle went on for weeks, but she was never found, and no proof of foul play was ever discovered.

  I rubbed my forehead. Just reading the newspaper articles about him gave me a headache. “What he said to the police is a total contradiction to the rumors at the college, according to what Jack was told. The gossip mill said Isabelle was cheating, so he had to know about it, and stories like that spread like wildfire. Do you think he killed her? Maybe she was what sent him to crazy town.”

  “It’s possible,” Amber said, “but if the cops in Madison never arrested him, they obviously couldn’t find enough evidence.”

  “And that’s probably why he kills the women in such unusual ways. He uses his expertise to his advantage, and there aren’t any physical signs of how they were murdered.” I stood at the whiteboard and began jotting down my thoughts. “First, he has a God complex and is seemingly very narcissistic. I’m sure he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Isabelle was a professor who could have been fooling around with other professors right under his nose. That’s the worst kind of humiliati
on.” I noticed Amber’s eyes widen.

  “What if she was fooling around with male students?”

  “Whoa, that didn’t occur to me. Maybe that’s why he set his revenge on students.” I began rifling through our notes. “I remember somebody saying Becca and Daphne were tutored in chemistry. If they failed their finals, it could push back their education. What if Morton was that tutor, or even worse, what if he promised them a passing grade for personal favors?”

  “You may be onto something, Kate.”

  The phone centered on the table rang, and I grabbed it. “Kate Pierce here. Yep, hang on.” I pressed Speakerphone. “Go ahead, Donnelly. Amber is with me.”

  “Why are you answering Jack’s phone?”

  “He’s with Naomi’s parents so the calls were transferred to the conference room where Amber and I are working. Did you find the cigarette butt?”

  “Yep, and it has to be his. It was the only one we found, and the location was right.”

  I sighed with relief. “And it’s a Marlboro?” Tim’s pause was too long and I felt my shoulders sink.

  “No, it’s a Salem. Was the one at the marsh a Marlboro?”

  Amber let out a groan. “Yeah, maybe you hadn’t stepped in on the conversation yet when we said that. So we think he smokes Salem, but we have to prove it without a shadow of a doubt. Somebody needs to go to his house and search the yard for cigarette butts, but we’ll have to clear that with Jack first. Have the guys drop that cigarette butt off downstairs so the lab can extract DNA from it. We really need their help here getting our ducks in a row.” I clicked off the call and glanced at the clock. We had to speak to Jack, but the only thing we could do at the moment was continue bullet pointing our theory until he walked through the door. Still, we needed questions answered before Mr. and Mrs. Hahn left. I fired off a text to Jack, saying we needed to know if Naomi took botany or chemistry classes and if she was failing either one. We’d get the physical proof soon enough, and Mike Morton or Martin Glover—whatever his name was—would spend the rest of his life in prison.

  My phone vibrated as a return text came in seconds later. I checked the message, and the answer was yes to botany and yes to failing.

  “Add Naomi’s name to the failing-in-botany and tutored list. So we have two girls who were failing chemistry, one who was failing botany, and all three were in Morton’s classes. At least we’re establishing a connection between them.”

  We heard footsteps heading our way. “Finally,” Amber said when Jack rounded the corner.

  “Sorry it took so long. I escorted Mr. and Mrs. Hahn down to the coroner’s office, and Lena pulled me aside and said she had checked for signs of sexual activity simply because Naomi was discovered nude.”

  “And?” Amber grabbed her pen.

  “And she found evidence. Of course, I didn’t share that information with the parents since they told me Naomi wasn’t dating anyone. Both Becca and Daphne were fully dressed, so that exam wasn’t deemed necessary, but now, in hindsight, I told Lena to go back and examine both girls, anyway.”

  “That’s smart.”

  Jack took his seat at the head of the table. “They’ve agreed to an autopsy too. So what have I missed during the last hour?”

  I gave Amber a side-eyed glance before speaking.

  Jack noticed. “That didn’t look promising.”

  “The guys are headed back with the cigarette butt they found.”

  Jack slapped the table. “Perfect! So what’s the problem?”

  “It doesn’t match the one from the marsh.”

  Jack squeezed his temples. “Why can’t we catch a break?”

  “Boss, I have an idea.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “You have Silver sitting on Morton at the university, so how about I run out to his house and check the yard for Salem cigarette butts.”

  “Not on your life.” Jack stood and paced around the table.

  “Come on, Boss. Karen can meet me there. We’ll be in and out in a few minutes. Everyone else is needed here, and Amber is killing it—excuse the pun—with note taking. We’ll knock on the door as if we expect him to answer. When he doesn’t, we’ll just walk the yard for a bit before we leave. We might even find a cigarette butt on the ground somewhere.”

  “Trespassing and snooping are the same thing, Kate.”

  “But he’ll never know we were there. Silver will make sure of that. And in my opinion, killers don’t get special breaks.”

  Jack pushed up his sleeve. “Call Silver and make sure Morton is still at the university. I want you back in that chair”—he pointed at the seat I was in—“in forty-five minutes. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Absolutely.” I leapt from my chair and headed down the hallway.

  Jack yelled out the door. “You better have your phone and your sidearm with you.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Chapter 56

  He turned the wand on the blinds and looked out for the tenth time. The cop was still parked on the corner.

  What a moron. Does that imbecile think his patrol car is invisible? I know he’s watching my Explorer since there’s nobody here other than me that’s guilty of anything. This school is nearly a ghost town since tomorrow is the last day of finals.

  Mike grinned. “I have to commend the sheriff’s department for actually doing their job. I’m flattered that they’re so curious about me. Maybe I need to rethink my exit strategy—my coups de grâce, if you will.”

  He made the call, was picked up on the other side of the building by an independent driver who advertised in the free newspaper, and was home ten minutes later. Inside, he began to pack the items he’d need to lay low in one of his apartment units until he had his final plan figured out. He’d hide behind the Martin Glover identity since law enforcement wouldn’t connect him to that name. No matter what, he was still smarter than the cops and could outwit them without breaking a sweat.

  The sound of gravel crunching beneath tires perked his ears. Mike moved the curtain aside and peered out. He watched the driveway until the vehicles came into view.

  “A cruiser and a patrol car?” He chuckled. “I guess somebody needed to back up somebody else.” He was interested to know who was in the cruiser. It had to be a detective, but which one? He had likely met them all. He grabbed a handful of aspirin and chomped them like peanuts while he watched the action unfold in front of him. A woman stepped out of each car. The patrol officer rounded the front of her squad car and had a brief conversation with the detective.

  Mike grabbed his binoculars and focused on the woman in the blazer. “Just as I thought. It’s the bitch from the restaurant—Kate something.” He rubbed his chin with curiosity and walked to the dining room window to watch—a good fifteen feet from the front door. Mike wondered why they were there, especially when one of their own was watching his car. He was sure they thought the house was empty—his vehicle wasn’t there. The women walked to the door together, gave an obligatory knock, then waited. He could hear their conversation from his position. “So they’re going to snoop around for cigarette butts? Looking for DNA, are ya? But how did you know I smoke?” He thought about the number of times he’d flicked butts into the yard—it wasn’t often and none recently that he could remember. He’d raked the yard several weekends ago to clean up the remaining winter debris.

  He watched as they parted at the porch, each going in a different direction. The pounding in his head was increasing, and so was his anger. The aspirin did little lately to relieve his pain. From room to room, he followed the patrol officer, watching out each window until she disappeared around the garage.

  I’ll strike now while she’s hidden from view of the detective.

  He turned the knob and slinked out to the patio then crossed the backyard to the detached garage. He didn’t like the thought of them snooping around his botanical gardens either. He had his doubts that inexperienced people knew what poisonous plants looked like, but the belladonna
berries could easily be identified during an autopsy.

  No worries—Naomi will never be found.

  He heard that cop rummaging through the trash scattered behind the garage. He peeked around the corner then sneaked up behind her while she was preoccupied. “Psst.” She turned, and with a coiled fist, he coldcocked her in the face. She hit the ground like a ton of bricks, then he stomped her in the ribs. He gave her one more punch for good measure, ripped out her shoulder mic, and tossed it in the trash heap. Mike flattened himself against the walls of the garage until he got a bead on the detective. He saw her near the firepit.

  Shit—that’s where I burned Naomi’s clothes.

  He watched as the detective picked a piece of cloth out of the ashes. His moves took only a second. Mike charged her at a full run and knocked her feet out from under her. Kate hit the ground but got her bearings before he had time to deliver another blow.

  She jumped up, ready to strike back, but immediately grabbed her head. She was stunned as she cried out and fell to her knees. He kicked her to the ground, where she moaned in pain. Kate couldn’t move.

  “What’s wrong, Detective? Giving up that easily? I have a right to protect my home, and I don’t see a warrant in your hand. I’ll sue the county for trespassing on private property. Now get the hell off my land.”

  She lay in the dirt, her head grasped between her hands, and rocked back and forth.

  “You call yourself an officer of the law? You’re pathetic and can’t even defend yourself.” He reached inside her blazer, released the holster’s thumb break, slipped the weapon into his waistband, then tossed her phone into the brush. Mike delivered a final blow to her gut and walked away.

  Chapter 57

  Worry took over Jack’s thoughts. His leg bounced involuntarily as he watched the clock.

  Over the last hour, the team had concluded that all three girls must have been tutored by Morton since they were failing his classes.