The Triple Threat Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Jensen’s mouth opened, but Nic didn’t let him speak.

  “Except there’s one problem with that scenario. Why did Rick stab her without gloves? Why did he leave the knife right next to her body? Those are the actions of someone panicking. Who doesn’t have any plan.” Nic shook her head. “It would make sense if Rick wore the gloves the whole time, or if he never wore them. Discarding them only for the moment when he murdered her makes no sense. No sense at all.”

  “Maybe we just haven’t thought of the right explanation,” Jensen said.

  “Even if this bald guy went over there with him and they acted together, it still doesn’t explain the evidence. Rick should have touched more things or none at all.” She pointed at the binder. “Can I look?”

  When he nodded, she stood and looked over Jensen’s shoulder as he paged past the crime scene photos, first the establishing photos of various rooms of the condo, then the closeups of various pieces of evidence.

  Nic put out her hand. “Wait. Go back through the photos of the drinking glasses again.”

  There were six in the book. All tall, all made of clear glass, a common style you would see in anyone’s kitchen.

  She pointed at the third one. “And this is the one that showed Rick’s fingerprints, right?”

  He looked at her, at the glass, back at her. “Yeah.”

  “Look at them again.”

  Jensen’s eyes narrowed. He paged back and forth until he spotted the difference. “The bottom of the glass with Rick’s print is a lot thicker than the others.”

  “It could be a coincidence.” She played devil’s advocate. “We all break glasses and replace them with glasses that look similar but may not be identical.”

  “Yeah, but remember that case in New York about twenty years ago? Where the trooper lifted fingerprints from the interrogation room and then put them on evidence cards and claimed they came from the scene of the murder?” Something like hope sparked in Jensen’s voice. Flipping past other photographs of evidence, he paged ahead to the fingerprint section. Cassidy’s prints were in there—taken at the autopsy—as well as Nic’s and Allison’s. All as elimination prints. There was also a card with Rick’s prints.

  Each item that had been dusted had then been photographed before the lift tape was applied. After the tape lifted the print, it had been placed on a lift card. The criminalist had then drawn a picture on the other side of the lift card to show orientation, and the card was marked on the print side as to which side was up.

  Nic bent over Jensen’s shoulder as he compared the prints taken from the glass with Rick’s prints. She wasn’t a fingerprint examiner, but she did have a trained eye, and she couldn’t see any difference. The prints on the glass seemed to belong to Rick. If they had been faked somehow, whoever had done it hadn’t left behind any clues.

  Jensen lifted his head with a sigh.

  “What about the knife?” Nic asked.

  He turned back. The black smooth polymer handle of the knife had been dusted with silver powder so that the prints would show up against the surface. The partial fingerprints were on the right-hand side of the knife, if the knife was pointing up and away from the viewer.

  Nic knew that the prints had been scanned and inputted into IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which could compare them to the fingerprints of the nearly seventy million people in its database. However, the system was not as automated as it appeared on TV. Instead of spitting out an instant match, once the prints on the knife had been scanned, IAFIS would have provided a human print examiner with a list of candidates whose fingerprints were the closest matches to the latent prints on the knife. The latent examiner would then compare the two images on-screen and decide if there really was a match.

  The prints had matched, but still something seemed off to Nic. She made a fist, looked down at her hand, twisted it back and forth, looked back up. “Is there a kitchen around here?”

  Back out in her car, Nic called Allison. “Do you have a minute? I want to come by and show you something.”

  “I have a few minutes but then I have to leave for an appointment. Can’t you just tell me on the phone?”

  “It won’t take very long.” Nic could feel her heart beating in her ears. “But it’s important. And you’ll understand better if I can show you in person.”

  Ten minutes later Nic was in Allison’s office and pulling something from her purse. She didn’t know if she would have been able to get it past the security guards and the metal detector if she hadn’t been an FBI agent. As it was, it had taken a bit of talking.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a knife.”

  Allison’s brow creased. “It’s a table knife.”

  It was a battered stainless steel piece of silverware Nic had found in the police break room. “It doesn’t matter what kind of knife it is. The principle is the same.” She handed it to Allison. “Now stand up and hold it like you’re going to stab me in the belly.”

  Allison winced, but did as she was told. She gripped the knife so that the sharp side was pointing up and so were her fingers. Her thumb rested on the thick heel at the bottom. She looked up at Nic with wide eyes. “Okay.”

  “Look down and remember exactly where your fingertips are on the handle. Now hold the knife as if you’re going to chop onions.”

  Turning the knife over, Allison shifted her grip so that her fingers were pointing down and her thumb rested on top of the handle. She turned it back and forth, holding it both ways. “My fingers end up on the other side of the handle. But what if he stabbed down with the knife?”

  “The only way he could reach her heart was to thrust it up.” Nic pushed her fingers into her abdomen, just below the ribs. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. Try it.”

  Allison raised the knife as if she was going to stab down with it, but she had to flip the knife, placing her pinky finger where her index had been. “Okay, we’ve established that each way of holding the knife is different.” She looked from the knife to Nic. “But why does it matter?”

  “I went to talk to Jensen about the bald man, and we ended up looking at the murder book. The prints on the knife are Rick’s. But he couldn’t have made them holding the knife when it stabbed Cassidy. It looks like he was using the knife as it was intended—to chop vegetables.”

  “How come no one else figured this out before?”

  “It’s the print examiner’s job to match the prints on the knife with the prints on the card. And they do match. But they’re only partials, so it wasn’t immediately obvious that they were on the wrong side of the handle. Jensen and I only noticed it today. And the knife itself doesn’t match Cassidy’s knives. But it does match Rick’s. So it was brought there.”

  Allison’s brow creased. “Someone planted the knife?”

  “More than that. It really was used to kill her. It has Cassidy’s blood on it. And it matches the wound they saw on the autopsy. I think someone took Rick’s knife from his kitchen and used it to kill her. That’s probably why she was strangled and only stabbed when she was dying or dead. When I first heard it, I thought it was overkill. That Rick was so angry he needed to kill her twice. But now I think the only reason she was stabbed was to frame Rick for the crime. That’s why the prints are only partials. The real murderer took Rick’s knife and then used it when he was wearing gloves.”

  “The real murderer?” Allison asked.

  “The bald guy.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Allison parked in front of Oregon Federal, her mind whirling. Was Rick really innocent? She had hated to leave Nicole, but she was already late for the meeting with Lindsay and the loan officer.

  She saw that Lindsay was waiting for her, peering out the floor-to-ceiling window of the lobby, her hand shading her eyes. It was time for Allison to be the big sister. The mystery of what had happened to Cassidy could, sadly, wait.

  Part of Allison had been afraid that Lindsay would be a no-show, nap thro
ugh it, miss the bus. Part of her had even been afraid that Lindsay would snap under all the expectations being piled on her—by Lindsay herself, most of all—and she would disappear again into the streets. It wouldn’t be the first time she had left behind shattered dreams and broken promises.

  Now Lindsay smiled, lifted her hand away from her eyes, and gave her a little wave. Looking a little relieved herself, as if she’d had her own doubts about whether Allison would show.

  The air inside the bank was a good thirty degrees cooler than it was outside. It felt good to shiver. Walking past the two people waiting in the teller line, Allison joined Lindsay in the small waiting area separating the teller area from four desks that sat, evenly spaced, on the flat blue carpet. One loan officer was on the phone, while the other three were talking to customers.

  “That’s our person,” Lindsay said in a stage whisper as she and Allison sat down. “That Annie Botinelli you made the appointment with. She’s the one who’s on the phone.”

  “Nervous?” Allison asked.

  Lindsay’s smile was tremulous. “Sometimes I can’t believe this is really happening. I mean, I’m going to have my own business. I’m going to call all the shots.”

  “And pull them too,” Allison said, making a joke about the espresso machine that cost as much as a used car.

  Lindsay swatted her shoulder playfully. “Ouch! You never could resist a bad pun.”

  “Sorry,” Allison lied, hiding a smile. The world was finally opening up to Lindsay, eighteen years after their father’s death had nearly shut down her heart.

  “That’s okay. You can make all the bad puns you want. There’s no way I’d get this loan on my own. I’d be lucky if I could get someone to loan me a quarter for the vending machine.”

  It was a big risk. If Lindsay got lured back into the street life—and she would be right in the middle of it with her cart . . .

  “You’re my sister,” Allison said simply. Her heart was full of memories of the kid sister who had always tagged along, wanting to do whatever Allison was doing, see what she was seeing, wear what she was wearing, play with whatever she had in her hands.

  She had spent thirteen years with Lindsay looking up to her. Thirteen years fending her off with annoyance, more often than not. Then, after their dad died, Lindsay had spun out of Allison’s orbit, sucked into a black hole of destruction.

  Finally she had her sister back.

  Lindsay must have been thinking along the same lines. “You’ve always been a good sister to me, Allison.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly, wondering if she really had been.

  “Look, I know you thought I would never get my act together.” Lindsay sighed. “To be honest, there were days—heck, whole years—when I thought the same thing.”

  “But you did.” Allison squeezed her hand and let it go. “And look at you now.”

  Lindsay looked down at her lap. “I keep feeling like someone is going to jump up and snatch it all away. Like I’m a fraud. A fake.”

  “You know what, Linds? That’s normal. Everyone feels that way, at least at first. I think it took a couple of years before I stopped feeling stupid introducing myself as a lawyer. It was like—who am I kidding?”

  Allison and Lindsay had been so busy talking that they hadn’t noticed the loan officer hanging up her phone. Now she beckoned to them. She was a tall, athletic-looking woman in her late thirties with a curly, blond-streaked bob.

  Taking a deep, shaky breath, Lindsay stood and collected the box of cookies and her business plan. Allison followed her.

  The loan officer stood up and offered her hand. “I’m Annie Botinelli.”

  Lindsay and Allison introduced themselves.

  “Wow!” The loan officer looked from Allison’s face to Lindsay’s and back again. “You guys look so much alike.”

  “Thank you,” Lindsay said, and winked at Allison with the eye the other woman couldn’t see.

  One reason they looked so much alike was that this morning Allison had done Lindsay’s hair and makeup, loaned her a pair of earrings as well as a dark blue suit. Even the shoes Lindsay was wearing were Allison’s. At first Lindsay had wanted to wear a shorter skirt and higher heels, an outfit Allison would only wear to a night out on the town. Lindsay was still getting the hang of dressing like a businesswoman. But the suit, which Allison had worn to court many times, said that Lindsay was serious, that she was mature. Just the look her sister needed to project today.

  “I brought a copy of my business plan.” Lindsay bit her lip, as if Annie might refuse it. Instead the loan officer held out her hand.

  As Annie started leafing through the pages, Allison realized she had to go to the bathroom. Again. She had been drinking so much water lately, trying to stay hydrated in the heat. “Excuse me. Do you have a restroom?” she asked.

  Lindsay gave her a slightly panicked look, but they had rehearsed this so many times. Sometime she was going to have to learn how to play grown-up all by herself. And Allison really had to go. As she stood, Allison whispered into Lindsay’s ear, “Don’t forget the cookies.”

  Annie had pointed at a swinging door at the back of the carpeted area. A small square window was set at eye level. When she pushed open the door, Allison found a door for the men’s on the right, a door for the women’s on the left, and an unmarked door at the back.

  In the empty women’s room, she took the second of the two stalls. As Allison pulled up her panties a minute later, she had a sudden realization. She counted in her head. She was late. Could it be?

  No.

  Yes?

  No.

  What had she been thinking, risking it?

  The year before, she had lost a pregnancy in her thirteenth week. They hadn’t known why, not in a medical sense. Not even in a spiritual sense.

  She remembered how she had thrown up Thursday night. How lately smells had seemed so, well, smelly.

  Could she be?

  And if she was, could she stand to lose a baby again? Could they?

  Since the miscarriage, she and Marshall had been in something of a holding pattern. They seldom talked about what had happened, but Allison suspected Marshall thought about the lost child as much as she did.

  It had to be a false alarm. The last week had been horrible. The stress of Cassidy’s death and everything that followed had probably thrown off her cycle. No point in dwelling on the hope or the fear. Both would prove to be misplaced. No point in giving it a second thought.

  In the mirror, Allison stared at her own reflection as if it belonged to a stranger, a young woman with her dark hair pinned up and a faint flush staining her cheeks. Her hand shook a little as she reached for the faucet.

  As she started to twist it, she heard three loud bangs, one right after another.

  Gunshots.

  Her heart seized.

  The shots had come from inside the bank.

  Allison turned off the water. What should she do? Her gaze pinged from one corner of the room to the other. She was trapped in here, trapped in a tiled box without even a window. The space under the sinks was open. There were no cupboards or closets. There was no place to hide.

  On tiptoe she took two steps and stood next to the restroom door. But she was too afraid to open it.

  Over a frantic murmur of voices, a man was yelling, “No alarms, no dye packs, and no tracers, or you all die!”

  Allison stepped back and looked at the door. Looked for what wasn’t there. There was no way to lock it.

  She remembered the unmarked door at the end of the hallway. But to get to it, she would have to leave the restroom and go back out into the hall. The hall that was separated from the bank by only a swinging door with a small window anyone could look through.

  Allison jumped as a woman inside the bank began screaming. She didn’t think it was Lindsay, but she couldn’t be certain. Oh, God, help us. What should she do, what should she do?

  One of the tellers should already have triggered a silen
t alarm. Should was the operative word. What if they had been surprised? What if the tellers had decided to obey the robbers’ commands?

  Allison pressed herself into the corner on the back side of the door, grabbed her cell phone, and pushed a couple of buttons.

  “Hey, Allison.”

  She blessed caller ID for saving her precious seconds. Keeping her voice as close to a whisper as she could, she said, “Nicole—listen. I’m at Oregon Federal on Seventh and it’s being robbed. I was in the bathroom when I heard three shots fired and a man yelling about no dye packs and no alarms.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m hiding in the bathroom, but, Nic, hurry, get people here, a woman in the bank won’t stop screaming.”

  “How many men? What kind of weapons do they have?”

  “I think at least two guys, and I don’t know.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  “I don’t know,” Allison said again. “Maybe.” She didn’t know anything. Other than that she was paralyzed thinking that at any moment a man might come crashing through the door and shoot her. Shoot her in the belly. She realized her free hand was shielding her flat abdomen and whatever it did—or didn’t—contain.

  “Just hold on a second.” Allison heard Nicole relaying information. Part of her dared hope. Nicole would move heaven and earth to help her.

  Then she was back on the line. “Is there any place you can go that’s safe?”

  “I can’t lock the bathroom door. It’s in a short hall and there’s a men’s bathroom on the other side. There’s another door at the end, but I don’t know if it’s locked, and in the door to the hallway there’s a window they could see me through.”

  “Don’t chance it. Just stay where you are. Get in a stall, close the door, and stand on the seat. With luck, they’ll be too busy getting out with the cash to go looking for anyone. The cops are on their way.”

  Before Allison could move, the noise from the bank suddenly escalated.

  She heard a man shout, “Why are you looking at me? I told you not to look at me!”