Liar

by Campbell, Jamie

  He shook his head slowly. “No, it means Pace will be breathing down my neck and making sure I work on other cases. He will give me so much paperwork I won’t be able to leave my desk.”

  “But Renee’s death is a homicide, won’t you be investigating it?” Amelia was confused, she couldn’t see any sense in keeping their best detective chained to a desk. It was counterintuitive.

  “It’s been assigned to someone else.”

  “But nobody knows the facts like you do-”

  “It’s doesn’t matter,” he interrupted tersely. “Pace makes the rules and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  Amelia grew angry, surely he couldn’t give up just like that. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. “So you’re going to give up on Jordan? What are you going to tell Kale White?”

  Leo was silent, unable to give an answer he was satisfied with. He had the conversation with Kale in his mind several times since his meeting with Pace and each time he had thrown away the words and started again. He didn’t know how to say he had failed.

  “You have to find a way to keep going,” Amelia was relentless. “You just have to. There is an innocent man sitting in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. There is a woman and a five year old child dead. And someone is getting away with it all. You can’t quit on something like that.”

  “I don’t want to quit, I have no choice.”

  “Everything is a choice.”

  She let the words sink in as they continued to watch the house. The space between them was tense, awkward even, and neither of them were willing to be the one to change it.

  After another forty minutes, there was action. “Amelia, look,” Leo said urgently. He pointed at the house. A man with a potbelly and slicked back hair emerged from the front door and headed for his vehicle. It wasn’t the red one Lane had repainted but a dark blue four wheel drive. One very similar to the vehicle in the storage facility’s security cameras. They had thought it black, but it could very well have been the dark shade of blue.

  “It’s him,” she muttered under her breath, barely believing they had managed to find him again. Considering he hadn’t been at the Armstrong Inn all week, they had wondered whether they were completely out of luck. She silently thanked Lane for giving them the lead they so desperately needed.

  The man climbed into his car and drove off down the road. They ducked down in their seats to make sure they couldn’t be seen as he passed.

  When they could no longer hear the engine, they risked peeking out the windscreen.

  “He’s gone,” Leo declared the coast clear. “I saw no other cars in the garage, he most likely lives by himself.”

  “So now what do we do? Try and follow him?”

  “No, we toss his house and see what falls out.” He grinned, opening the car door.

  Without waiting for his temporary partner, Leo closed the distance between him and Master Lou’s house. He took long strides, hurrying while trying not to be noticeable. He didn’t want to be identified by neighbors later on if everything went pear shaped.

  Amelia caught up, having to walk twice as fast just to keep his pace. She looked around in a panic, hoping they weren’t about to walk into something terrible or dangerous. She was definitely out of her comfort zone. So far out she couldn’t even see it anymore.

  They reached the front gate and kept going, Leo walking with the confidence of someone who was supposed to be there. He skirted around the front façade of the house and headed down the side. He approached each window carefully, peeking inside before he passed. There had been no movement or sound emanating from the rooms, he was confident enough to keep going.

  Around the back of the house, everything was quiet. Leo tried the back door, knocking first before trying the handle. As expected, it was locked. He crouched down, examining the mechanism. He pulled out a small pick from his pocket and jiggled it in the lock.

  “What are you doing?” Amelia asked, her panic not subsiding.

  “Breaking in, what do you think I’m doing?”

  “You can’t do that.”

  He tried the handle, the door swung open. “I already have. Are you going to stand there and preach or are you coming in?” He didn’t wait to hear the answer.

  Inside, the house was just as still as it looked from the outside. “Police. Is anyone here?” Leo called out. He received no answer so he kept walking.

  Amelia joined him, cautiously stepping onto the carpet in the living room. From the looks of it, Lou seemed to live in an ordinary habitat. A widescreen television was mounted on the wall, a corner lounge sweeping half the side of the room. A coffee table with enough coffee rings to mistake it for a pattern stood between the two.

  “What are we looking for?” She asked.

  “Anything that tells us more about Master Lou,” Leo replied as he started flicking through a stack of paperwork on the table beside the lounge. It just seemed to be a pile of catalogues, nothing personal at all.

  He left her and moved down the hallway. This was real police work, something he reveled in. You could only get so much information from people, their belongings spoke much louder most of the time. Human beings had a habit of surrounding themselves with things that reflected who they were, or sometimes who they wanted to be. Their stuff spoke the truth when they didn’t.

  The first room he came across was the master bedroom. It contained barely an unmade bed, sitting in the middle of the clothes-strewn room. So far, Leo could tell Lou wasn’t exactly a domestic god. He obviously didn’t have the time or inclination to clean.

  Besides some questionable reading material that featured many bare breasts, there was nothing of interest in the bedroom. Lots of clothes hid a gun in the closet but it contained no ammunition and had its serial number clearly marked. Leo jotted down the number to check on later and returned it.

  He crossed the hall to the next room, it appeared to be a study. A single bed was pushed up against one side but it was covered in junk. Clearly it hadn’t been used for a long time. On the opposite side of the room was a desk with a plush leather chair left carelessly out. But it wasn’t the serious need for a cleaning service that caught Leo’s attention. It was the series of photos splayed across the desk.

  He stepped closer, making sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “Amelia, in here, I’ve found something.”

  He waited for her to join him, waiting to make sure she got a good look before anything was disturbed. If she was to get a psychic flash, it would be from the contents on the desk.

  “What is it?” She asked as she stepped into the room. She didn’t need an answer. “Oh my God.”

  “I know, right?”

  He gave her a moment before picking up the photos. Dozens of them all depicted various locations and distances from their subject. They were date stamped, the time frame seemed to span at least five weeks. The last photograph was taken three weeks earlier.

  “Was he stalking Renee?” Amelia asked, completely overwhelmed by the images. She appeared in every single one of them. At work, at home, in the supermarket, at the police station, with her family. It seemed Master Lou had been following the woman everywhere.

  “He certainly seemed obsessed with her,” Leo commented, still studying the desk.

  “There’s photos here of Jordan and Kale with her. It’s sick. Have you seen anything like this before?”

  “Too many times.”

  “Did they always end with death?” Amelia was horrified at the thought. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  “Usually.” With his voice solemn, Leo hated admitting it. Unless they got caught by some miracle beforehand, stalkers rarely just give up without getting their object of desire. There was no reason to believe Master Lou was any different.

  The photos, combined with the gun and the repainted vehicle, were certainly painting a vivid picture of the man. Leo only knew one thing for sure. “I’m not going to give up on this case.”

  “Good answer.�
�� Amelia smiled. “What do we do now?”

  “Now, we get out of here without being seen.”

  He took a few photographs of his own with his cell phone and tried to replace everything to how it was before they broke in. They couldn’t have Master Lou suspecting they were onto him.

  Once someone felt the trap starting to tighten around them, they became desperate. And people did desperate things when they had to. Leo couldn’t allow that to happen until it was on his terms. He needed to play his cards right, legitimize the case and then go for him. In the meantime, try to work out how to convince Commissioner Pace to let him into the investigation. It had to be done.

  They made it back to the vehicle and didn’t hesitate to start the engine and put some distance between them and the house.

  Thoughts were racing through Leo’s mind at a hundred miles an hour, trying to piece together all the evidence he had accumulated and facts he had determined. He needed to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle and see if it produced a complete picture yet. He only had two days before he had to get back to work and there was still so much to do.

  He hit the speed dial button on his phone while he was waiting at traffic lights. He didn’t want to waste any time.

  “Shawshank,” the casual male voice answered.

  “Michaels. Buddy, I need a background search on a guy and I need it quick. Are you up for doing me a favor?” Leo spoke faster than Amelia had ever heard him talk before.

  “Sure, what’s the name?”

  “Lou Delaney.”

  The sound of typing filled the line as Leo reeled off the man’s address.

  “Got it. You want me to email this?”

  “Yes, please. I owe you one buddy.”

  “You can always make payment in beer,” Shawshank replied, his grin coming through in his voice.

  “You got it, thanks.” Leo hung up, nodding as he did. The traction was back, he was getting somewhere. This time, he was determined to keep it going. He was on a serious deadline.

  * * *

  Leo slapped the photograph he had taken of Lou’s desk onto his murder board. He felt a sense of satisfaction, like he had uncovered the man’s greatest secret. You could run but you couldn’t hide from Detective Michaels.

  He held the email from Constable Shawshank in his hand, reeling off the facts as he added them to the board.

  “Lou Delaney, aged forty-one, Caucasian, three counts of assault causing grievous bodily harm, two counts of possession of stolen goods, and a sealed juvenile record.”

  “Why’s it sealed?” Amelia asked, listening intently to the new information.

  “Because he was only a minor, it’s procedure to seal the records so it stays as just a mistake. It gives the kid a chance to change and not have their youth haunting them the rest of their life.”

  “Is there a way to have it unsealed?”

  “Yeah, we can apply to the courts. But I don’t think it’s necessary yet. I doubt he was caught for anything that could help us. I’m more interested in the grievous bodily harm,” Leo explained, skimming through the rest of the report. It was a lengthy rap sheet, painting a murky picture of the man. “According to the report, he bashed a man so badly he ended up in a coma.”

  “Wouldn’t that be attempted murder?”

  “He took a plea deal for the lesser charge. He did two years in jail for the assault.”

  The more she heard about Master Lou, the more Amelia couldn’t help but think how creepy it had been stalking around his house. If he had been home or returned to find them, they wouldn’t have had a very happy ending. She shivered at the thought.

  “He had a gun,” she muttered. “He could have killed us.”

  Leo stopped, noticing her distress for the first time. “Yeah, but I have one too so it would have been alright.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, but I wouldn’t have put you in danger. If I really thought someone was home, there is no way I would have let you come with me.”

  She figured he seemed to be missing the entire point but didn’t think she could make him see that. Just like with every other person she came up against, she gave up. “Fine, let’s just move on.”

  Leo hesitated for a moment before continuing. “So we know Lou is a bad guy, that’s a given. What we don’t know is how he is connected to Renee White. How would someone like that even come across a middleclass nurse?”

  “Renee was dealing drugs, that kind of seems like something Lou would be into,” Amelia offered.

  “Hmm, I’m not so sure. There’s normally a pattern to a drug dealer, a series of arrests that could be a precursor. I’m not feeling that with this guy. I’m getting more that he’s a thug.”

  “Because of the assaults?”

  “And the stalking. I think Master Lou is someone who always gets what he wants no matter what the cost.” He shrugged. “But I could be completely wrong. Are you getting any feelings?”

  She waited a few minutes, closing her eyes to show she was zoning in on her psychic ability. Really, she was just counting down from five. “Nothing, sorry. I get that he’s creepy if that counts.”

  “I don’t think you need to be psychic to get that feeling,” he laughed.

  “Maybe he was a patient of hers? He’s probably getting himself beat up all the time too.”

  “That’s a good point.” Leo wrote the possibility on the murder board. “Stalkers can get set off from the tiniest detail. If Renee was his nurse at the hospital, all she might have done is said hello or looked at him. He could have taken it personally and become fixated on her.”

  “So why would he kill her if he was obsessed with her? Wouldn’t that mean he would miss her?”

  “If he couldn’t have her, then nobody could.”

  Amelia grimaced at the thought. If Master Lou killed Renee, she wouldn’t even have seen it coming. To have been followed, photographed, and menaced like that would have been horrible. And she was probably oblivious to it all.

  “Would she have known?” She asked, trying to imagine being the objects of someone’s obsession like that.

  “Stalking victims normally know their perpetrator. They try and approach them several times, appear where they shouldn’t be, send them gifts. They can make life hell for them.”

  “You don’t think Lou was the one Renee wanted to tell the district attorney about, do you?”

  Leo shrugged, the thought had occurred to him. The problem was he couldn’t explain why Renee had also gone to see Bree Rowland. A stalker wouldn’t be a big news story, they happened all the time. There didn’t seem to be anything special enough about Lou Delaney that warranted media coverage.

  “I don’t think so but I can’t rule anything out yet,” he finally answered. “I’ll speak to Bree and see if Renee said anything about a stalker or led her to believe that’s what the story was about.”

  One more thing was still bothering Amelia. “Why would Lou kill Jordan? We know he was connected to a car that was at the scene where his body was dumped. But why do it?”

  “A kid is a big distraction for a mother. Lou could have believed he was the reason why Renee couldn’t be his. Jordan was not only taking affection away from him, but also linking Renee to Kale. He was a hurdle that needed to be removed,” Leo reeled off the theory, remembering all the case studies he had learned over his career. Lou seemed to be a textbook example. His desire to possess Renee overriding every piece of logic and human decency he had.

  “I’m not a fan of kids,” Amelia started. “But I could never see one as a hurdle. I don’t understand how he couldn’t be anything other than evil.”

  “I’m with you there,” Leo readily agreed.

  “So Lou killed Jordan and then tried to get close to Renee. When she refused him, he decided to kill her too?”

  “It looks that way. If he didn’t pay Turner to take the fall, we may never have made the connection.”

  “So he was too clever for his own good.”
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  “Wouldn’t be the first criminal to stuff up his own case. They aren’t exactly known for their genius.”

  Amelia could only shake her head at the absurdity of it all. No human was worth killing for. Not in her opinion, anyway.

  They continued discussing the case and what they had found while Leo made them both coffee in the kitchen. Harley lingered only long enough to get a pat and treat before going back to his bed in the living room.

  As Amelia was sipping, a thought occurred to her, one she was actually happy to have. “If Master Lou killed Renee and Jordan, then it means Renee is off the hook. She didn’t have anything to do with her son’s death. At least not on purpose anyway.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “So how do we prove everything so we can get Commissioner Pace to listen to you?”

  “We get more evidence,” Leo replied simply.

  * * *

  Amelia could feel every eye in the place on her. She felt like she was naked, completely exposed for their gawky eyes to watch her. She stayed close to Leo, trying to ignore the men as she walked. Construction sites were never a place she wanted to be.

  “So Lou Delaney worked as a supervisor for you?” Detective Michaels asked, his notebook out while he was all business.

  The site foreman nodded. “Yeah. He worked here on and off for about three years. He was good at his job.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He up and quit on me two weeks ago. Said he was going to take some time off and probably wouldn’t be back this time.” The foreman appeared genuine, Amelia noticed. He hadn’t told them even a small lie since they showed up unexpectedly at his construction site. He had let them in as soon as Leo flashed his badge and was more than happy to talk. She was impressed, he seemed like a decent human being. But there was always time to disprove it.

  “Have you seen him since?” Leo continued.

  “Nope. I saw him at the pub that afternoon and that’s the last time.”

  “What do you think of him, you know, as a person?”