Lucinda tasted a lie in his answer. She rolled the flavor around her mouth as she headed back downtown.
Forty-Six
Evan forced himself to concentrate as he finished getting the girls ready and dropped them off at their respective schools. When he reached his office, he sat in his car trying to figure out what to do.
If Rita’s telling the truth, Kirk was out of the hospital and had been for quite some time. But Rita could just be scamming me – looking for a quick buck. She did show me a marriage license, but was it real or a forgery? And if it’s all a lie, how did she learn about Kirk in the first place? Did she really meet him when she visited someone else at the hospital? Or did she work there? Or did she used to be a patient there? Or did she learn some other way? Impossible.
Evan thought back to the abrupt shift in his childhood. Before his move to Lynchburg, he remembered his relief when Kirk was sent away for good. He still felt the barbs from his classmates who’d tormented him about his crazy brother and avoided him outside of school. But most of the first nine years of his life was a swirling mass of disorganized film clips.
He recalled the move clearly, though. He remembered day after day, returning home from school and facing his mother’s interrogation at the kitchen table.
“Did you let your old last name slip out today?”
“No, Mom.”
“Even accidentally?”
“No, Mom.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Don’t look down at the table, Evan. Look at me.” She waited until he raised his head and met her eyes. “Did you mention your brother?”
“No, Mom.”
“Not one little slip?”
“No, Mom.”
“Did you say anything about where you used to live?”
“No, Mom.”
“You swear to me you never will?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“No matter how long – no matter how old you are – you will never let Kirk’s name cross your lips?”
“No, Mom.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, Mom, I promise.”
Then he’d sit and listen, as she recounted the nightmare stories about her oldest son. Occasionally, he’d face the same questioning from his father, and he’d give him the same promise. Now his father was dead but the oath Evan made him still lived. In fact, it held a tighter grip on him than the one he’d made to his mother. There were dark corners in his relationship with her that he was afraid to explore.
Although his parents had assured him Kirk would never see the outside world again, it looked as if Kirk was on the loose. Could he have killed Kate and all of those other women? Had he? Or was it someone else from the past, haunting me by recreating Kirk’s crime? Who could hate me and my family that much? A member of Bethany’s family seeking revenge after all these years?
He wanted to talk to Lieutenant Pierce about all of this. He wanted to tell her everything. But he’d promised his parents – he’d sworn he would not reveal the family secret. He didn’t know what he feared more: a guilty brother who kept killing while he dithered or an innocent brother railroaded to lethal injection because of his mental instability and a distant past of violent acts. Was Kirk a monster or just a convenient scapegoat?
He wanted to trust Lieutenant Pierce. He wanted to help her – help her solve the mystery of Kate’s murder and more. He didn’t know why he was drawn to her. He knew she cared about Charley and that mattered but it didn’t answer the question of his attraction.
Pierce didn’t have Kate’s beauty – she may have once, but not now. She didn’t possess Kate’s gentle grace – she was abrasive and aggressive. Unlike Kate, Pierce was a hard and unyielding woman. But he sensed somewhere inside of her was a core of softness, a place that Charley touched and that he yearned to explore.
But he needed to know more before he walked down that road. He had to talk to his brother. Until he had answers, he could not betray his promise to his parents unless he knew Kirk was guilty. That’s why he’d put Rita up at the hotel. Rita could lead him to Kirk. I’m trusting Rita to do the right thing and yet I won’t trust Pierce? That felt wrong but he didn’t know what else to do.
.
Forty-Seven
Lucinda was about to pull into the parking lot of the Justice Center when she noticed a crowd gathered there. Two satellite uplink trucks by the curb and a milling group of people holding video cameras, microphones and notepads made the media presence too obvious to ignore. She turned down a side street while she called Ted on his cell. He was driving in circles, too. “Meet me at Boone Brothers,” she said.
“The funeral home?” Ted asked.
“Yeah, let’s see if Freddy has a spare hearse.” She hung up before Ted could object.
Freddy Boone was a high-school classmate of Lucinda’s and Ted’s. Every time she saw him, Lucinda was amazed by how little he’d changed over the years. The soulful puppy eyes of a crooner, the slicked-back jet black hair of a Latin lover, and beatific smile of a saint. And even after all these years in the family mortuary business, he still had the soul of Dennis the Menace.
Freddy wrapped his gangly arms around Lucinda and said, “Oh, darling, not another one?”
After her mother’s death, Lucinda had moved in with her grandmother. Her grandmother’s circle of friends had embraced the motherless child with an intense affection that never died over the passing years. Lately, the old women were dying of old age on a regular basis and all of them had prepaid funeral plans with the Boone Brothers. “Thank heaven not today, Freddy. I have a different problem this time.” Lucinda explained their current dilemma.
Freddy was delighted. Not only did he have a spare hearse that morning, but he also volunteered to be their driver. To Freddy, the plan had all the earmarks of a good high-school prank and he couldn’t think of a better way to spend his morning.
Ted, on the other hand, needed some convincing. He was squeamish about crawling into a space normally reserved for coffins or body bags. After Lucinda and Freddy exchanged a few jokes at Ted’s expense, he gave up and crawled in the back with Lucinda for the short drive to the medical examiner’s office in the subterranean level of the Justice Center.
Freddy pushed open the glass between the driver’s seat and the back of the hearse and said, “Hey, Ted, I don’t think I’ve seen you since high school, man. Don’t your loved ones ever die?”
“There’ve been a few, Freddy, but they’ve all been out of town funerals.”
“If that changes, Ted, you know who to call.”
“Will do, Freddy. After this morning, I owe you big time.”
“You owed me for a lot longer than that, my man. You stole the love of my life – the lovely Lucinda.”
“Oh, c’mon, Freddy,” Lucinda said, “you barely noticed me in high school.”
“Au contraire, lovely one,” Freddy said. “I was insanely jealous of Ted.”
“But Freddy, she was such a nerd in high school,” Ted quipped.
“Excuse me! A nerd?” Lucinda said.
“Please, Lucinda, don’t deny it.”
“Aw, but such a lovely nerd,” Freddy said.
“She was that and still is,” Ted said.
“Can’t argue with you there, Ted. One look at her, I want to write poetry.”
“I did write poetry.”
“Really? You had it real bad, didn’t you?”
Men are so full of crap, Lucinda thought. Do they think I’m stupid? With the shape my face is in, I’m about as sexy as road kill baking under a hot summer sun. “Okay, guys,” Lucinda interrupted. “Enough. Please. Look, we’re here.”
They drove past the horde of reporters gathered by the front of the building observing them through the anonymity of the dark tinted glass. The journalists betrayed their impatience by constant motion and repeated mike checks. A small clutch of news-types gathered by the side entrance and a few even lurked by the rear entrance to
the morgue. All of them, though, ignored the hearse.
Freddy pulled up to the double wide garage door and tooted his horn. A male face appeared in the small people-sized door beside it. The man nodded at Freddy and disappeared. In seconds, the garage door began its ponderous and noisy glide up. The sound attracted glances from the reporters, but nothing more.
Inside, two techs stood next to a stretcher. After the garage door lowered back down to the floor, Freddy opened the back door of the hearse with a grin. The techs watched in stunned silence as two live bodies emerged. Lucinda said, “Thanks, Freddy,” and gave him a peck on the check. She turned to the techs, waved and said, “No thanks, guys, we don’t need a ride today.”
She and Ted headed up the hall to the elevator. The moment they stepped out on to the Homicide floor, Captain Holland barked, “In my office.” Once the door shut behind them, he said, “I hope you two no-commented your way in here.”
“No need, Captain,” Lucinda said.
“What do you mean ‘no need’? What did you say to them, Pierce?”
Holland listened as Lucinda and Ted delivered a tag-team account of the tale of their arrival. Holland shook his head and laughed. “Brilliant. You gave the death guys’ day a good start and you kept your ass out of a sling in one fell swoop. Now, let’s keep all of us out of trouble. In one hour, the PIO has a press conference. By then, we need a task force formed and a firm meeting date set.”
“But Captain . . .” Lucinda began.
Holland slapped a copy of that day’s newspaper on the desk between them. Across the top, a huge headline screamed: “Serial Killer Arrested”. Beneath the banner in a smaller font was a subheading: “Prominent Doctor Charged with Multiple Murders”.
“No buts, Pierce. The chief and everybody between me and him has already chewed my ass this morning and Spencer’s attorney’s been out there playing up to the media about his client’s false arrest. That’s all the press will talk about if we don’t get something new out there. Call every jurisdiction. Coordinate a time. Let’s roll.”
“What about the Feebs?” Lucinda asked.
“Whether or not the FBI gets involved is a task-force decision. You can work that out with your fellow team members. Let’s get busy lining them up now.”
It took multiple calls to each of the jurisdictions to settle on a date and time that worked for all the departments involved. At last they had it – next Monday at two p.m.
“We’ve time to wrap this up before then, Ted.”
“In your dreams, Lucinda.”
They banged out a list of investigators and their agencies and attached it to an e-mail and sent it down to the PIO. Lucinda and Ted went to the conference room to brainstorm angles to follow over the next few days.
“How are things with Ellen, Ted?” Lucinda asked.
“We’ve got important work to do right here, Lucinda,” Ted said.
“Ted!”
“Okay. Okay. She said I could come over and see the kids this weekend.”
“That’s a step in the right direction.”
Ted laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. She also said I could sign our separation agreement while I was there.”
Lucinda didn’t know what to say. She was spared from the effort of figuring that out by the ringing phone. “Pierce,” she said.
“Lieutenant, I’ve got your DNA results. They are very interesting.”
“Interesting? How? Audrey?”
A dial tone was her only answer.
Forty-Eight
With both arms stretched in front of her Lucinda pushed open the two doors and burst through the entrance to the lab. “What’ve you got?”
“Come here,” Audrey said. In her bright-blue suit, she would’ve looked like an edit pencil if she hadn’t had her elbows jutting out with her hands resting squarely on her hips.
Lucinda joined her in front of a computer with two monitors. Audrey punched on the keyboard and two profiles popped up on the left-hand screen. “There are the samples from the two beer bottles. Identical,” Audrey said.
She pressed another combination of keys. Two profiles popped up on the right-hand monitor. “The top profile is from the nail scrapings of the young girl at the triple homicide. The lower profile is from the bottom of the skillet – that one is just preliminary. We took a few shortcuts to process it as quickly as possible. We’ll need to run it again but they appear to be identical.”
Lucinda’s eye bounced between the two screens. “They all look identical.”
“No. Not quite. Very similar. But some distinct differences. Look here. And here. And here. And here,” she said pointing a pencil tip from screen to screen.
“What does it mean?” Lucinda asked.
“I did a quick process of one of the samples from the suspect you brought in last night.”
“Thank you, Audrey.”
Audrey glared at her with a pursed mouth and one arched eyebrow.
Oh jeez, Lucinda thought. “Thank you, Dr. Ringo.”
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant,” she said as she pounded on the keyboard again. Three profiles replaced the two on the first screen. “On top, we have a beer-bottle profile. On the bottom, we have the fingernail-scraping profile. The one in the middle is your suspect.”
“What am I looking at? What does it mean?”
“Your suspect’s profile is a perfect match with a beer bottle profile.”
“Yes, and . . .?”
“It is similar to but not identical to the crime-scene profile.”
Lucinda wanted to scream in frustration at her lack of comprehension and Audrey’s refusal to get straight to the point. Instead, she asked again, “What does it mean?”
“Do you want my guess? My educated guess?”
“Yes, please.”
“In my professional opinion, the owner of profile one and two is the brother of the owner of profile three.”
“So, wait a second. You’re telling me my suspect was not at the crime scene but his brother was?”
“That’s what the profiles indicate, Lieutenant.”
Forty-Nine
Lucinda pressed the elevator button, got impatient and headed for the stairs pounding up three flights to her floor. She flew past Ted on the way to her phone. “Looks like our perp is Evan Spencer’s brother.”
“What? Evan Spencer has a brother?”
Lucinda spouted out a quick summary of the test results to Ted as she punched in the numbers to Evan Spencer’s office.
‘Doctor’s office.”
“This is Lieutenant Pierce. I need to talk to Dr Spencer right now.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, Dr Spencer is with a patient. May I take a message?”
“No, you may not. Interrupt him. Now. I need to talk with him immediately.”
“I am sorry but I cannot interrupt the doctor when he’s―”
“Yes, you can. Do it. Now.”
“But―”
“I could have you arrested for obstruction of justice.”
Lucinda heard the phone clatter on the desktop. She waited, tapping her foot. “Hello, Lieutenant?” the receptionist said, her voice filled with caution and dread.
“Yes.”
“Dr Spencer told me to tell you to call his attorney.”
“Listen. You tell the good doctor that either he picks up the phone right now or I’ll come over there and barge into his examination room. I’ll even wave my gun around if I have to.”
The phone clattered once again. In a moment, Evan Spencer came on the line. “Lieutenant, as soon as this call is completed, I am contacting my attorney and asking him to file a harassment complaint with your superiors.”
“Where is your brother, Doctor?”
“What brother?”
“Your brother.”
For a moment there was silence on the line then Evan spoke. “I don’t have a brother, Lieutenant.”
“I know you have a brother, Doctor.”
“I’ve answered your
question, Lieutenant, and you refuse to accept my answer. I have to insist now that you talk to me only through my attorney. If you interrupt me at my office, I’ll sue you and the department.” The phone slammed in Lucinda’s ear.
Lucinda disconnected and pressed in the extension for the forensic lab explaining Evan’s denial to Ted as she did. “Audrey? Are you sure you have brothers there? Could you have made a mistake?” Lucinda winced as Audrey’s vitriolic response scorched her ear.
“Yes, Dr. Ringo, but the suspect says he doesn’t have a brother.” She held the phone from her ear and winced again.
“I’m sorry Dr. Ringo. Thank you, Dr. Ringo.” She hung up the phone. Why would Spencer lie about something like that? “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
“Lucinda?” Ted asked.
“What?” Lucinda snapped.
“What if he has a brother but doesn’t know it?”
“What if . . . Shit!” Lucinda slipped on her jacket and headed for the door. “I’m off to Lynchburg to pay a visit to Evan Spencer’s mother, Ted. Wish me luck.”
Fifty
He sat in a nearby coffee shop sipping on a cup of coffee and running ideas through this head. How can I convince the manager to let me into the lieutenant’s apartment?
A woman rose from a small table, leaving behind her laptop and cellphone as she went to the restroom. The perfect plan came to him in a flash. People can be so careless, he thought as he walked past her table, palmed the cell and slid it into his pocket.
A block away, he started when an insipid tune jingled in his pocket. The cellphone burst into song three more times and then stopped. He wondered if the owner were using another phone in the coffee shop to call hoping she’d find her phone by the sound. He reached the apartment building, memorized the apartment manager’s number posted on the door and rode the elevator to the sixth floor. He exited and punched in the number.
“Riverside Apartments, Ridley speaking.”
“Mr. Ridley, someone was yelling in apartment 6D a minute ago and now I just hear moaning. I’m afraid she’s hurt.”
The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Page 20
