The Only Suspect

by Jonnie Jacobs

  She hesitated. “If you look only at the evidence, I agree, he looks good for it.”

  “Only at the evidence? What else is there?” It was Dallas who spoke, but from the look Morrissy gave her, it was clear he was thinking the same thing.

  There’s instinct, Hannah noted silently. But she’d been wrong before, with people she thought she knew a whole lot better than Sam Russell. “I just don’t want to make a mistake,” she said.

  Morrissy narrowed his gaze. “Good. Neither do I.”

  Hannah slipped the pack of Marlboros into her purse and headed outside. Her plan was to sit on the edge of the concrete planter in front of the building, have a smoke, and soak up some soothing sunshine while mulling over what they had on Maureen Russell’s murder. But the bench was already taken by the desk sergeant and one of the uniformed cops. Smokers’ camaraderie aside, she had no desire to join them.

  She had a better idea anyway. She got into her car and, once she was safely on the road, called Dallas and told him she was going to talk to Ben Albright’s neighbors.

  “We covered that,” Dallas said.

  “I’m covering it again.” In fact, they hadn’t covered it—patrol had. And while Hannah could only assume they’d done a fine job, she preferred interviewing potential witnesses herself.

  Half an hour later, she’d tried the five closest neighbors. No one was home at two of the houses, and she learned nothing useful from the three people she managed to talk to. The houses along that stretch of hillside were far apart and strategically placed to offer views of the valley rather than the street. None of the people she’d spoken with had even known Albright was away.

  Hannah perched in a spot of shade on the rock wall that abutted Ben Albright’s driveway and pulled out another cigarette. So what if she was a few hours short of the prescribed time for her next one. Regimented smoking wasn’t very satisfying, which of course was the point, but Hannah no longer cared.

  Hannah watched a hummingbird hovering near an overgrown honeysuckle bush that climbed the side of the carport. The air was pleasantly warm and fragrant, the silence soothing.

  She could probably afford better than the cottage she was currently renting, she thought. Nothing as elaborate as Ben Albright’s, but with the proceeds from Malcolm’s life insurance, she had enough for a down payment on a house. You’d think after what he’d done, she’d be happy to spend the money on herself. Instead, it sat in the bank, untouched. As though by not actually using the money, she could distance herself from the hurt and betrayal.

  Hannah finished her cigarette and headed for the car. Suddenly, the roar of a leaf blower shattered the silence. A gardening truck was now parked in the driveway of the house directly across the street.

  Well, why not? Hannah thought. I’m here anyway. She approached the man with the blower. He was young and thin, with a scraggly goatee. With the noise of the blower, she had to walk into his line of sight to get his attention. He finally saw her and turned the thing off.

  Hannah showed him her badge. “I’m investigating the murder of a woman whose body was found across the street,” she explained.

  “Yeah, I read about that. Dr. Albright’s house, right?” He set the blower on the ground. “That will put a crimp in his vacation to Italy.”

  “You know him?”

  “I do some gardening for him on occasion.”

  “Have you seen any activity around the house while Dr. Albright’s been gone?” Hannah squinted into the sun. “Delivery truck perhaps? Workers or visitors?”

  The man fingered his goatee, thinking. “There was a woman. Drives a big red SUV of some sort.”

  That would be Season. “We know about her,” Hannah said. “She’s a friend of Dr. Albright’s.”

  “There was a silver car there too. About a week ago.”

  Albright would have been in Italy by then. “Do you remember the day?”

  “It had to be a Monday or a Thursday, ’cuz those are the days I work here. I’d planned to go over to Albright’s to do some pruning, but his ladder’s at the back of the carport and the car was blocking it.”

  “The car was in the carport?” Hannah asked. From what she’d seen, most visitors, including Season Connell, parked in front and entered that way.

  The man took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “Yeah. Albright’s got a second car parked to the right, but he mostly uses that section of the carport for storage, so it was odd seeing a car there.”

  “What time was it?” she asked.

  “Early afternoon sometime.”

  “Do you remember anything distinctive about the car? What make it was? Old or new?”

  “Newish. A sedan. Fancy. I couldn’t say for sure what the make was.”

  “Was it there long?”

  The young man shrugged. “It was there when I left, is all I know.”

  A lot of people drove silver sedans, Hannah reminded herself. And Sam Russell was one of them.

  CHAPTER 30

  Dallas wasn’t at his desk when Hannah returned to the station. She was grateful for the reprieve. She knew the look he’d give her when she told him about the silver sedan the neighbor’s gardener had spotted parked in Ben Albright’s carport. She wouldn’t even have to remind him the description matched Sam’s car.

  Hannah poured herself a cup of coffee from the communal pot of sludge in the break room. It was pretty awful stuff, in part because nobody ever really washed the pot. Its redeeming quality was that it was quick and convenient. Carla was standing by the fridge talking to one of the other uniformed officers, but she broke away to speak to Hannah. She was holding a cup, which Hannah knew would contain tea, not coffee—peppermint from the smell of it. Carla kept a personal cache of herbal teas in her desk.

  “I put my report on Dallas’s desk,” she said. “Nothing more on the SUV Sam claims to have seen the night of the ransom drop.”

  “Dallas thinks he made the whole thing up.”

  Carla ran a hand through her bangs. “It strikes me as a pretty fair assessment. There’s also a preliminary report from the lab on that towel with blood spots found in Sam’s laundry. The blood type matches Maureen’s.”

  Hannah absorbed the shock. Could she really have been so wrong about Sam? “Any indication how old it is?”

  Carla shook her head. “Didn’t look like it had been there forever though. Oh, and I put the detailed inventory from the search of Sam’s house and car on Dallas’s desk too.”

  “Anything significant?”

  “Nothing like a murder weapon, if that’s what you mean.” She blew on her tea to cool it before taking a sip. “There’s one thing though. Among stuff they found in Sam’s car was a small silver buckle.”

  “You think that might be important?”

  “The shoe Maureen Russell was wearing when we found her body, didn’t it have a buckle?”

  Hannah couldn’t remember. “I’ll check on it, but she undoubtedly rode in the car many times, so finding anything of Maureen’s—hair, clothing, a buckle—it doesn’t mean much.”

  Carla cocked her head. “Except it was found in the trunk of Sam’s car, not the interior.”

  Back at her desk, Hannah put the coffee aside. It was worse than usual. Maybe tea wasn’t such a bad idea.

  She reached for the inventory report and glanced over it quickly then headed downstairs to the evidence room. She signed in and asked to look at the items taken from Sam Russell’s car. She dumped the contents of the bag on the table and found the buckle. It was delicate and maybe a quarter of an inch square.

  Next she asked to see the clothing taken from the body. Hannah found the shoe Maureen Russell had been wearing. It had a heel strap with a buckle. To Hannah’s eye the buckle on the sandal and the one taken from Sam’s car were identical. There were arguably any number of ways it could have landed in Sam’s trunk, but she knew Dallas would see it as further evidence of Sam’s involvement.

  Hannah had to admit it didn’t loo
k good.

  She took the opportunity to again examine the cryptic notation on the back of the recipe flyer she’d found in Maureen’s pocket. 233—160B. Sam had affirmed that the handwriting appeared to be his wife’s but said he had no idea what it referred to.

  Hannah could imagine Maureen reaching for whatever piece of paper was handy to scribble down a reminder to herself. Hannah often did the same thing. Shopping lists, phone numbers, addresses, directions, web sites, names of songs—if there wasn’t a notebook handy, and there usually wasn’t, she’d grab an envelope, a mailer, the back of a sales receipt, even the deposit slip from her checkbook. Her jacket pockets and the front seat of her car were littered with such scraps of paper, many of them quite old.

  Likely that was the case here as well. A notation about an event or meeting long since past. Something Maureen had jotted down in a moment on the move, something that had nothing whatsoever to do with her abduction or murder.

  But it might be related. The possibility kept buzzing in the back of Hannah’s mind. Trouble was, the notation was vague enough that Hannah didn’t know where to go with it.

  Since she was there already, Hannah also asked for the box that contained the items she and Carla had collected from the barn and surrounding area. She looked them over again, one at a time. Nothing that shed any light on the identity of the kidnappers or even confirmed Sam’s story about the ransom drop. She examined the object she’d picked up behind the barn, the one Carla thought might be a zipper pull. The geometric design looked like a logo of some sort, one that was vaguely familiar, but Hannah couldn’t say from where.

  She took the plastic pull to the desk clerk and showed it to him. “Do you recognize this logo?”

  He glanced at it then back to her. “Sure, it’s from that Indian gaming casino a couple of hours north of here.”

  Once he said it, Hannah recognized the logo herself. She’d never been to the casino, but she’d seen the ads. It was a popular place, and they probably sold, or gave away, all sorts of promotional items. She swallowed her disappointment. The pull wouldn’t help them identify the kidnappers, even if they knew for sure it was connected to them, which they didn’t.

  She returned the evidence to the box, and the box to the clerk, then climbed the two flights of stairs to her desk.

  Half an hour later, she remembered she’d promised to call Frank Donahue, the Boston cop who’d worked the case of Sam’s first wife. She dialed the number, noting too late that, with the time difference, she might be catching him in the middle of dinner.

  He answered on the second ring and assured her dinner was long past. “We eat early since I retired,” he said. “Early and light. My wife watches me like a hawk.” The words were delivered with an affectionate chuckle.

  “We found Sam Russell’s wife,” Hannah told him. “She was murdered.”

  “Oh my.” Donahue was silent a moment. “You think Sam killed her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to determine. Anything you can tell me about the murder of his first wife that might help us in that regard?”

  “I doubt it. How did she die?”

  “She was strangled,” Hannah explained, “but there were stab wounds to the neck and chest.”

  “Like Sam’s first wife.”

  “The coroner thinks the killer used something soft, like a scarf or necktie, to strangle her.” Hannah fiddled with a blue plastic paper clip from her desk. “You mentioned last time we talked that they found rope in Sam’s garage similar to the stuff Lisa was strangled with.”

  “Right. Common cotton rope, the kind you can buy at any hardware store.”

  “So it’s not exactly the same.”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  She slipped her thumbnail under the inner band of plastic. It looked like her nail was bright blue. “In our case, the ME thinks the lacerations were inflicted postmortem.”

  Donahue was silent a moment. “Lisa Russell was still alive when her throat was cut. The theory was he strangled her first, to subdue her. Or got impatient when she wouldn’t die.”

  Hannah cringed and again stumbled in trying to reconcile the evidence with the man.

  “Maureen Russell was wearing only one shoe when we found her. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No. Lisa’s body was fully clothed, including both shoes.” He paused. “What about her ring?”

  “What about it?” The paperclip broke, and Hannah tossed it into the trash.

  “Was she wearing her wedding ring?”

  Hannah tried to recall. She’d just looked through the box of personal items taken from the body. She didn’t remember seeing a ring. “I don’t know,” she told Donahue. “Why?”

  “Lisa’s ring was missing. At trial, the defense argued that the missing ring pointed to a stranger having killed her. I didn’t see it that way myself. A smart man might take the ring to make it look like someone else did it. Or he might take it because it was valuable.”

  “Was it? Valuable, I mean?” Instinctively, Hannah ran her thumb along the base of her own ring finger. She’d gotten married with a simple gold band and the promise of a diamond. The diamond had never materialized.

  “Yes, in fact it was,” Donahue said. “It belonged to Lisa’s grandmother. It was appraised at the time of the wedding at twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Wow, that’s some ring.”

  “You can see why Sam might have removed it before dumping her body.”

  Or why a killer might have wanted it. “You’re convinced he killed her, then?”

  Donahue didn’t answer at first. Hannah thought he might not have heard her. Or perhaps he’d found the question insulting.

  “I thought Sam looked good for it,” Donahue said after a moment. “I wouldn’t have taken it to the DA so quickly though without pressure.”

  The unspoken message being he was something short of convinced. “What pressure?” Hannah asked.

  “The chief. He and Lisa’s father were old friends.” Donahue hesitated again. “I think the rush may have had something to do with Sam’s walking. We left holes in the case, and the defense ripped into them.”

  Hannah knew that was always a dilemma. If you waited until you had an airtight case, you’d never close any of them. “You think I could get a copy of the file?” she asked.

  “Going through channels could take a while. Let me see what I can do for you.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “I’m sort of re-examining the evidence anyway,” Donahue added.

  Hannah was confused. “The case is active still?”

  “Not officially. But Lisa’s parents asked me to look into it.”

  “They think their daughter’s killer might have been someone other than Sam?”

  “Not at all. They want to make sure Sam gets nailed for the current murder.” He paused before continuing. “They’re also worried about their granddaughter.”

  “Worried how?”

  “Her being around Sam. They had custody while he was on trial. Now they’d like permanent custody.”

  A mental picture of Sam and Molly flashed into Hannah’s mind. It had been readily apparent that the bond between them was strong and genuine. Hannah’s heart immediately went out to the little girl. She’d already lost a mother and a stepmother. How awful to lose her father too.

  “You think they stand a chance?” she asked.

  “If Sam’s arrested, it will be a slam dunk.”

  Hannah flipped on the evening news while she chopped mushrooms and onions for the omelette that would be her dinner. She knew she should fix a green vegetable too, but there was nothing in the house except an open package of frozen peas, heavily discolored by freezer burn.

  There’d been a time when Hannah took pride in her cooking. She’d bought cookbooks, clipped recipes, shopped for the freshest ingredients, and delighted in fixing meals Malcolm loved. She’d stopped cooking during chemo, in part because she didn’t have the energy and in part because
food lost its taste. Now she’d simply lost interest. What was the point anyway in cooking for yourself?

  Hannah put the skillet on the burner. She was already on her second glass of wine. She’d have to watch it or she’d be loopy before she finished dinner. She admired Sam’s resolve in pulling himself together and quitting. It couldn’t have been easy for him. She knew how hard it was trying to give up smoking.

  The television coverage switched from national politics to local items. Maureen Russell’s murder remained a top story, in part, Hannah thought, because of what had happened with Sam’s first wife. A photo of Sam and Lisa in happier times flashed on the screen. Hannah wondered how they’d gotten hold of it. In light of what Frank Donahue had told her, she had an idea who had provided it. Details about Lisa’s murder might not be admissible in a court of law, but the court of public opinion was another matter. If Sam were to stand trial for Maureen Russell’s murder, the defense would have a hard time finding jurors who hadn’t heard about the first trial.

  The news piece wrapped up with a short sound bite from Morrissy, who announced that the department was making good progress in the investigation into Maureen Russell’s murder. Thanks for the added pressure, Lieutenant. When the reporter asked if Sam was a suspect, Morrissy offered his standard response—those closest to the victim were always under close scrutiny.

  With good reason, Hannah acknowledged. There were basically only two scenarios when it came to homicide. The victim was either random or targeted. And in the second situation, more often than not the killer turned out to be a family member, spouse, boyfriend, or the like. Maureen’s murder bore none of the earmarks of a random killing; that left them with someone she’d known. By default, her husband would naturally be a serious suspect. What’s more, they’d yet to come up with any potential suspect besides Sam.

  The other component in Maureen Russell’s murder was that the killer was somehow connected to Ben Albright. He, or possibly she (Hannah tried to be evenhanded), had been familiar with the climate-controlled wine cellar and had known the house was vacant. Sam could have known, though he was hardly alone in that regard. Even the neighbor’s gardener was aware that Albright was away.