The Only Suspect

by Jonnie Jacobs

  I hadn’t the foggiest idea what the photo was doing in Maureen’s drawer. Was she jealous? Except for the photos in Molly’s room, I’d moved pictures of Lisa to a box in the closet for that very reason. I’d thought Maureen might not welcome constant reminders of my former wife.

  I took the photo into the study and put it with the others from my marriage to Lisa. No sense in giving the cops fuel for speculation.

  I checked the desk drawer, the household files, and all the spots I thought the cops might look. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Since I was feeling wide awake, I turned on the computer and typed up a draft press release on Maureen’s disappearance.

  Earlier that evening I’d called a couple of newspapers. The response was so similar at each I figured it must be something they taught in beginning editorial management class. Fax a press release, they all said, include a police contact, and they’d see what they could do. The uninterested tone at the other end of the line led me to believe they wouldn’t do much. Apparently, a plain-vanilla adult disappearance wasn’t newsworthy.

  But press coverage would help. The more people looking for Maureen, the better the chances of finding her. Of course, if she’d gone away of her own volition, I’d look like a fool.

  I could deal with it.

  And if I’d harmed her myself ... The thought knocked the air from my lungs. I didn’t want to go there even in the privacy of my own mind.

  Press release completed, I logged onto the Internet to check my e-mail. A horde of spam and a couple of professional newsletters. I deleted them all. At the top of the page was a note from Hal Patterson, my former father-in-law, asking if Molly could visit this summer. It had been sitting there, unanswered, for two weeks.

  When I’d been arrested for Lisa’s murder, the Pattersons had taken custody of Molly. It was a temporary, informal arrangement at first, but they’d fought to make it permanent. After the trial, when I’d been released, I’d had to go to court again to argue for my parental rights. The law was on my side, and in the end I’d won, but it was a contentious hearing that left a lot of bitterness on both sides.

  After the custody battle, I’d refused to let Molly go to Boston. The Pattersons had stopped in California once on their way to Tahiti and taken Molly to the circus. They’d come another time and taken her to dinner at their hotel. They sent birthday cards, and packages at Christmas. In return, I sent photos and Molly wrote them thank-you notes. The contact had been minimal, but I knew they had a right to see her, and lately Molly had been showing renewed interest in her mother’s side of the family. She’d probably love the trip, but the thought of sending her to them terrified me.

  I hadn’t been able to bring myself to answer. And tonight was no different.

  Instead, I started a short note to a colleague and friend in Boston. When I began to type in his name, I hit a wrong letter. Instead of prompting with my friend’s e-mail address, one I didn’t recognize popped up.

  Redhotsugarbear@hotmail.com.

  Redhotsugarbear? I scanned sent messages and found nothing. Ditto when I checked the trash. I was certain I’d never sent a message to someone by that name, and Molly didn’t have access to my computer. That left Maureen.

  Is that where she’d gone? Was she with Redhotsugarbear?

  I was overreacting, I told myself. It was probably a spam address that got loaded accidentally into the address book. But my mind kept returning to the possibility that she’d left me for someone else.

  By the time I logged out, the sky was growing light.

  After I dropped Molly off at school later that morning, I pulled into the parking lot of a nearby 7-Eleven store. On my way inside, I tossed the plastic grocery bag containing the shoe from my trunk into the garbage can by the door. Although there were only two other cars in the lot, I could feel the heat of at least a dozen imaginary eyes watching me. Clearly, I was not made for a life of crime.

  I bought a can of soda and a muffin and returned to my car. Only then, as I was setting my purchases on the seat beside me, did I think to wonder if there’d been a grocery receipt inside the bag with the shoe.

  No one was going to be rooting through the garbage, I told myself, so it didn’t matter one way or another. But I knew that if someone did, for whatever reason, and there was a receipt in the bag, my name would be on it. Such was the fallout of Safeway Club Card savings.

  I debated whether to retrieve the bag, which would be a relatively easy though highly conspicuous thing to do, or leave well enough alone. Figuring I’d worry endlessly about the receipt if I didn’t do something, I got out of the car to fetch the bag from the trash. Just then the mother of one of Molly’s classmates pulled into the lot and waved at me.

  “Morning, Sam. I’m so sorry about Maureen. Any news yet?”

  My mouth was dry. “No news.”

  “Maybe this will help.” She waved a flyer with a picture of Maureen in front of me. “I got a stack from Sherri Moore. A lot of volunteers showed up. The flyers will be all over town before the day is out.”

  Maureen’s photo took up half the space; the words I’d penned yesterday, the other half. MISSING and REWARD, in large, dark print, jumped off the page.

  “That’s good of you. Thanks.”

  “Just wish there was more I could do. Are you holding up okay?”

  “About as expected, I think.”

  “My prayers are with you.”

  I returned to my car. The window for garbage retrieval was closed. But I was already rehearsing how I could explain the shoe in the event the cops came asking.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hannah was an early riser. She always had been, even though Malcolm had complained when she slipped out of bed at sunrise. She loved morning—the quiet, the freshness of the air, the promise of the day ahead. And she was most productive in the morning, unlike Malcolm, who did his best work at night.

  There, she was doing it again, thinking of Malcolm. She’d hoped to leave all of that behind in Los Angeles. Wasn’t that the reason for the move? Well, part of the reason. Her sister, Claire, was the other part.

  Hannah threw back the lightweight comforter and padded into the tiny bathroom with its horrible turquoise and black tile. When she’d first seen the house, she’d known the bathroom would be a problem, but the landlord had agreed to knock thirty dollars a month off the rent, and she really had liked the rest of the house, so she took it anyway. It wasn’t a room for pampering oneself, but with the hooks and baskets she’d added for storage and the soft, cream-colored rug, it was adequate.

  She took a quick shower, decided her hair could go another day between washings, and toweled herself dry. At her right breast—her only breast—she hesitated then began methodically pressing her fingertips against her flesh in search of the lump she expected to someday find.

  “You need to be positive,” her mother admonished when Hannah had once spoken of her fears aloud. “Think of yourself as cured.”

  Cured. It wasn’t a term her doctors ever used.

  But her mother had always been a Pollyanna. That was another reason Hannah had wanted to leave LA. Her mother was adamant that she and Claire could “work things out” if only Hannah would make an effort.

  When hell freezes over, Hannah said to her reflection in the steamy mirror. And maybe not even then.

  She was at her desk and logged onto the Internet by seven A.M. She’d already heard Dallas’s version of the earlier case against Sam, but she wanted to read the newspaper accounts as well. It was slow going because there was another Sam Russell who was a marathon runner and whose name popped up on an amazing number of sites. Narrowing her search, she finally found a string of citations about the arrest and trial, and clicked through them.

  Many of the links were no longer operational, but she found enough to piece together the bare bones of what had happened. Lisa Russell had been reported missing by her husband, who claimed to have come home from a biking trip and found her gone. Their four-year-ol
d daughter was with her grandparents at the time. Suspicion centered on Sam almost immediately when Lisa’s mother confided to police that she’d noticed bruises on her daughter’s arm and reported that Lisa had seemed agitated when she came by to drop off the granddaughter that morning. She noted further that Lisa had grown withdrawn in the weeks preceding her murder and had stopped confiding in her parents.

  Lisa’s clothed body had been discovered eight days later, dumped at the bottom of a ravine in a wooded area outside of Boston. She’d been bound and stabbed.

  Police found rope and duct tape in Sam’s garage similar to those used to bind Lisa. At trial, there was conflicting expert testimony, with the state claiming the rope ends from the garage and from Lisa’s body were a perfect match and the defense expert refuting this. The prosecution also pointed to the life insurance Sam had taken out on his wife only six months earlier and the heavy debt Sam faced from medical school loans.

  The defense called several character witnesses but was able to produce only one witness who could corroborate Sam’s alibi—a homeless man who claimed to have had a brief conversation with Sam in the area where he was biking the day of the murder.

  After the trial, which ended in a hung jury, Sam’s attorney was quoted as saying that while he’d hoped for an acquittal, he was at least heartened that an innocent man had not been found guilty. There were several angry quotes from Lisa’s father and a grim prediction from the lead detective, Frank Donahue, about snowballing violence from perpetrators who escape justice. Hannah made a note of Donahue’s name. She’d call and see if he could add anything that might help them with their case.

  On one of the links, Hannah came across a photo of Lisa Russell. She was an attractive woman with straight auburn hair and a wide smile. Prettier than Maureen and more Sam’s contemporary in age. But the two women had similar coloring and the same high cheekbones. It was funny how people were so often attracted to the same type time and again.

  Hannah thought instantly of Malcolm and wondered how much her initial reaction to Sam had to do with the fact that he reminded her of Malcolm. She found them both attractive, but so what? Malcolm had been strong, sexy, funny. A charismatic guy who was also a louse.

  And Sam? She had the feeling he shared Malcolm’s better qualities. It was the other part she was having trouble with. Was Sam a louse or, worse, a killer? He wasn’t being entirely straight with them, but standing trial for a murder you didn’t commit was bound to make anyone cautious about dealing with the police. Maybe he hadn’t been as cooperative yesterday as they’d have liked, but that didn’t mean she was ready to haul him in.

  Not yet, anyway.

  CHAPTER 9

  Frank Donahue jabbed a fork into the egg-white omelette his wife had prepared for lunch. Two egg whites with green peppers and mushrooms. No cheese. No salt. She had frowned when he squirted on the catsup but didn’t say anything. How was a man supposed to get through the afternoon with such a skimpy lunch? Oh sure, he could have some cantaloupe and a spoonful of nonfat cottage cheese for an afternoon snack, but none of it took the place of a cheeseburger and fries or the hot turkey sandwich at the Alibi.

  It was his own fault. He’d made the mistake of telling her what the doc had said—lose fifty pounds or risk another heart attack. Frank wasn’t planning on ignoring the advice, he just wanted to lose the weight his own way. But Millie, God bless her soul, had a calling, and her calling was keeping Frank alive and healthy. She’d watched over him with an eagle eye ever since the heart attack seven years ago that prompted his retirement from the force. Twenty-five years as a cop, and then overnight he’s got nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs.

  “Take up golf,” his doctor suggested. But Frank didn’t have the patience for golf. And he didn’t enjoy traveling all that much, although he and Millie had taken trips to the South and the West and a one-week tour of England. He’d never been so happy to be home. Bad food, warm beer, air so damp and cold he’d taken to wearing long underwear on a daily basis.

  Frank still hung around the Alibi, near the station in Boston, when he could. He liked talking to the guys on the force, sharing in the jokes and the gossip, though he was feeling increasingly like an outsider.

  The phone rang, and while Millie answered it, Frank poured more catsup on his omelette. Catsup was a vegetable, wasn’t it? President Reagan had said so.

  “It’s for you, dear. Some detective from California. Do you want me to have her call back?”

  “I’ll take it.” He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin. Even if it was only a fund-raising solicitation, it might be the peak of his afternoon excitement.

  “Sorry to bother you,” a female voice said. “This is Hannah Montgomery, a detective with the Monte Vista police department in California.”

  A current pulsed through Frank’s veins. If memory served him right, Monte Vista was Sam Russell’s hometown. He’d moved back there after that joke of a trial he’d skated through. “How can I help you, Detective?”

  “I understand you were the lead investigator on the Lisa Russell murder. I was hoping you could give me an overview of the case.”

  “Why, has something happened?”

  There was a pause. “Sam Russell’s wife is missing.”

  Frank felt his blood start pumping—in a good way. The kick was probably as good for him as a game of golf. “He reported her missing?”

  “Right, and we’re thinking maybe there are some parallels with what happened before.”

  “You think Sam had something to do with it, then?”

  “We’d be crazy not to look at that angle, wouldn’t we?”

  The Lisa Russell homicide had been the last of Frank’s career. His heart attack and forced retirement followed within weeks of Sam Russell’s arrest. It left a bitter taste in his mouth that his last case had gone south at trial. Maybe this time, Sam wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “Sam claimed he was on an all-day bike ride,” Frank said. “When he got home, his wife was gone. Her car was parked on the street, where it usually was. There was no sign of forced entry.”

  “And her purse?”

  “It was missing too. Turned up a couple of days later in a Dumpster not too far from the house.”

  “Where was his daughter when it happened?”

  “The baby? She was with her grandparents. I thought that weighed against him pretty heavily. He waits until he knows his kid is out of the house before taking his wife.”

  “What about motive? Were they not getting along? Or maybe he had someone else on the side?”

  “Well, that’s where the lawyers got creative. She was pregnant, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yep. Only a couple of months. The prosecutor argued that Sam didn’t want another kid and that he and Lisa argued about it. Her mother testified to seeing bruises on Lisa’s arm a couple of weeks before she was murdered. She also said Lisa was upset and distraught but wouldn’t tell her mother what was going on.”

  The detective must have picked up something in his voice. She said, “It sounds like you’ve got some doubts.”

  “Motive was always a weak part of the case to me,” Frank replied. “But her parents were sure it was Sam from the beginning. It just about killed them to see him walk.” It had rankled Frank too, and everyone else who’d worked the case.

  “I was more convinced by the evidence,” he continued. “The knife she was stabbed with was found at the scene—it was a knife from the Russells’ kitchen. And she was strangled with a piece of rope that matched what Sam had in his garage. He said he was out riding his bike when it happened, but there wasn’t a single reliable witness who came forward to say they saw him. And there was one woman, a neighbor, who testified she saw Sam and Lisa leaving the house together about noon.”

  “Were there any other suspects?”

  “None that we took seriously. Lisa Russell was well liked and got along with everyone. The defense made a big deal about unidentified
fingerprints found in the house and the fact that there were two cans of soda in the trash. That was their lame attempt to show there was some mysterious third-party killer.”

  “At least one juror bought it.”

  Frank humphed. “Yeah. The guy was a total doofus. It was like he had his mind made up and didn’t even look at the evidence.”

  “Why not retry him?”

  “Good question. Lisa’s parents were certainly pushing for it, but the DA decided not to. There were a couple of other big cases in the news about then, and he was running for reelection. I think he didn’t want to take a chance of losing a second time.”

  Millie reached for Frank’s empty lunch plate and then pointed at her watch to remind him of their afternoon bridge game with friends.

  “I don’t know if any of that helps,” Frank told the detective. “But feel free to call me if you think of anything else. And keep me posted, if you don’t mind.”

  “Will do. Thanks for your time.”

  When he hung up, Millie raised a curious eyebrow. “Something new on the Russell murder?”

  “Not directly, no. But Sam’s current wife is missing.”

  “And the police suspect he might be involved.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Are you going to let Lisa’s parents know?”

  Frank supposed he should. That had more or less been his tacit agreement with the Pattersons when they’d hired him after the trial to find new evidence against Sam. Nothing had turned up, but he’d told them he’d keep them informed if anything new did.

  “There’s no rush,” he said, “but I think they’d want to know. If nothing else, it might give them some leverage in getting custody of their granddaughter.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Yesterday at the office I’d been a pillar of strength, at least outwardly, but today I couldn’t pull it off. After leaving the 7-Eleven, I called Debbie and had her cancel my appointments for the day. Then I tried retracing my path to the lonely country road where I’d woken Sunday morning and my nightmare had begun.