“Judge Thornton’s morning calendar was booked. The case is scheduled for two. Until the charges are officially withdrawn, the search warrant is valid. If we come up with new evidence, we might convince Thomas to prosecute. Hold on,” he said, talking to one of the crime scene officers. “Get all the shoes to the lab immediately. See if any of them match the injury that was on Jude Campbell’s cheek.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, coming back on the line. “This case isn’t dead yet, Carolyn. The threatening note that was left for you at the morgue was typed on the computer in Jude’s room. Someone had deleted it, even from the recycle bin. Ricky Walters, our computer expert, managed to extract a copy from the backup files.”
Carolyn might not be able to remember all the complex sentencing laws, but she recalled every word that Jude had spoken. “She said something about that, remember? When Mary wanted to tape the original interview, Jude mentioned that stuff on your computer never went away, even if you deleted it.”
“Finding the letter doesn’t tell us who wrote it,” Hank said. “This is the only computer in the house. My bet is Drew stashed his after Veronica was murdered. There’s a DSL connection in the bedroom, but no computer. I’m certain he has computers available to him at his work. Fat chance on us getting a warrant for Boeing.”
“Veronica had a laptop,” Carolyn told him. “The county started providing them to the officers who worked in court services when they launched the work-at-home program. I’ve already been through it, and I didn’t see anything unusual. What about Jude?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” Hank said. “Gary Conrad lost her. She stole the court reporter’s wallet and cell phone. She must have snuck out the back of the building. I thought they kept all the doors except the front locked on weekends, but they don’t. Too many people come in to get caught up on their work.”
“Great,” Carolyn said facetiously, angry that she hadn’t insisted on taking Jude home with her. “So now we don’t know where she is again.”
“This girl is shrewd. No wonder she got bored in school. Her IQ is probably off the charts. I’ve seen criminals twenty years older who aren’t as clever. Believe me, you don’t want this chick under your roof. Blink twice, and you won’t have a damn roof.”
“But didn’t Mrs. Hubert cancel her credit cards?”
“Yes, but not until Sunday afternoon. By then, Jude had got a cash advance of a thousand bucks on her American Express card, and purchased six first-class six airline tickets, all to different cities. We’ve alerted security at LAX, as well as the ticketing agents at the various airlines. Don’t hold your breath. We may never see this girl again. With a first-class ticket, she can change the city and date of departure, the destination, even have the ticket placed in someone else’s name. She must have bought them over the Internet.”
“Which cities did she buy tickets for?”
“I’m busy right now, Carolyn, but I guess you have a good reason for asking. New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, London, Dallas, New Orleans. Anyway, I think that’s right. She doesn’t have a passport, so I doubt if she can use the one for London. She’ll fly to one city, then exchange the ticket for somewhere else.”
“Reggie Stockton’s from New Orleans. I knew she was involved with Stockton. He’s your mastermind, don’t you see? He sweet-talked that poor widow into letting people believe he was her son. At twenty-four, he enrolled in high school. That’s where Jude must have got the heroin. Hasn’t anyone picked him up yet?”
“Nope,” Hank said. “I’m here working myself to death, and that asshole is probably in a first-class seat sipping champagne. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
Carolyn disconnected, checked in with Brad, then headed to the PD where Mary and Gary Conrad were working on the Snodgrass murder.
When she walked into the conference room, Mary was typing on her computer and didn’t notice. It was hard to see the surface of the table for the abundance of evidence, arrest reports, and file folders. To keep things separate, they had brought in plastic bins and written Campbell on some and Snodgrass on others in black Magic Marker. Keith Edwards cleared his throat to get Mary’s attention.
“Welcome to the madhouse,” Mary quipped. “I’m glad you’re here, Carolyn. We can use all the help we can get.” She wasn’t wearing any makeup, her hair was slicked back in a knot, and she had dark circles under her eyes. “When we catch Jude Campbell, I want five minutes alone with her. She’s got us chasing our tail. I don’t know which end is up anymore.”
Carolyn paced around the room, too anxious to sit down. “Stockton may be our murderer.”
Mary pushed her chair back from the table. “Hit me with it, just make it brief. We’re racing the clock here to keep Drew in custody since our star witness turned into Sybil yesterday.”
“Okay,” Carolyn began, trying to form her thoughts into a cohesive narrative. “Stockton was in custody in New Orleans for two felonies. If the truth came out, he could be extradited to Louisiana and sentenced to prison. Do you have any idea how bad the prisons are in Louisiana?” She paused for effect, then continued, “He was living his dream here. Going to high school, making out with the young girls. We know he and Haley Snodgrass were an item. She could have stumbled across the truth about his past, and tried to blackmail him after he ditched her. A young black male rented the room at the Motor Inn. Even if it took him a dozen tries, the clerk did eventually identify Stockton.”
“But Veronica was found at the Motor Inn, not Haley Snodgrass.”
“I know,” Carolyn said. “Just hear me out.”
“We don’t have time for nonsense,” Mary said without thinking. “Drew wears a size eleven shoe. Forensics is running all his shoes through the computer, trying to see if they can get a match on one of the heels against the bruises that were on Jude’s body.”
“What I’m telling you isn’t nonsense,” Carolyn shot back. “I know you’re running on empty, Mary, but you don’t have to insult me.”
“I apologize. Keep talking.”
“Haley Snodgrass follows Stockton to the motel room he rented with the intention of having sex with Jude. Snodgrass goes nuts with jealousy and threatens to tell the police about Stockton’s past. Stockton beats her and mistakenly believes she’s dead. Sometime during the beating, Jude runs out of the room and calls her mother. Stockton catches her and drags her back, unaware she’s called Veronica. He roughs her up, but not nearly as bad as he did Haley. Veronica shows up, Stockton grabs her gun, and the rest is history.”
“Why didn’t he kill Jude?” Mary asked, tapping her fingernails on the table. “Do you think she’d stand by and watch him shoot her mother? She might be cold, but no one could be that callous.”
“We know she took a beating,” Carolyn continued. “Maybe Jude was unconscious when Stockton shot Veronica. Now he has a gun, so he could make Jude do whatever he wants. They flee the room, leaving Veronica dead in the bathtub. Stockton forces Jude to help him bury Haley. The grave was extremely shallow, and Haley weighed only seventy pounds. Jude could easily carry seventy pounds. Stockton holds the gun to her head while she digs the grave. Now he tells her that the police will believe she’s the killer, that they’ll find evidence on the body and in the motel room. Everyone knew Jude and Haley were fighting over Stockton. And Jude had an extensive juvenile record, so she has to believe what Stockton is threatening could come true. To throw everyone off, she made up the abuse story about her father. Stockton isn’t in custody, so the threat is still there. That’s why Jude ran away from my house, and why she tried to overdose on heroin.”
Mary took a sip of her coffee. “Why didn’t she tell us the truth yesterday?”
“Because she didn’t believe we could protect her, outside of locking her up,” Carolyn reasoned. “Stockton could even have told her he had connections inside the jail. Once she hit the street, I believe, he snatched her. Then they used the stolen credit cards to get cash and buy the airline tickets.�
�
“There’s only one problem with your premise,” Mary said. “According to Charley Young, Haley Snodgrass had been sexually active since the age of ten or younger. That’s similar to what the doctor said about Jude. If they’d said these girls had started having sex at sixteen, I wouldn’t be shocked. But ten! Think about it, Carolyn. What are the odds of two girls who know each other having a history of sexual activity that young? I believe Hank is right, and Drew as well as Haley’s father was involved in some kind of pedophilia ring. Jude buying a ticket to New Orleans may mean nothing. She probably heard it was a party town.” She paused and held her pencil in the air. “She may have run off with Reggie, but that doesn’t mean he’s our killer.”
Carolyn flopped down in a chair. She hated to admit it, but Mary was right. She related what Rebecca had told her about Mr. Snodgrass, about how he acted like a kid and always wanted to hang out with his daughter and her friends.
“There you go,” Mary told her. “He fits the profile for a pedophile perfectly. Keep your fingers crossed that we can get a search warrant for Snodgrass’s house before he destroys all the evidence.”
“Look at all the unanswered questions,” Carolyn said, becoming animated again. “Who killed Veronica and why? Was Drew sexually abusing Jude, or is it possible that she fell prey to Mr. Snodgrass years ago? Are there two killers? Are they working together?”
“What do you think we’re doing here, for God’s sake?” Mary said. “Start digging through the evidence. Hank has been shuttling stuff in from Drew and Veronica’s house all morning. You knew these people better than anyone else, so you focus on them while we work Snodgrass. Gary Conrad is handling Snodgrass as well, but he’ll be working out of his office. He claims he can’t think when there’s too many people around. I’m under the opinion he can’t think because of all the pot he smoked in his surfer days. Now get to work. If Drew’s a killer and a pedophile, he’s going to go free in a matter of hours.”
Hank called from the forensic lab just before one o’clock. Mary placed the call on the speaker located in the center of the conference table. “I’m with Jack Myers,” he said. “He’s got a match on the heel of one of Drew’s shoes, but he’s not certain it will hold up. The bruise on Jude’s cheek was already beginning to heal when the pictures were taken at the hospital, so the image isn’t that clear. He can state definitively, though, that the markings match a size eleven shoe. What did you guys come up with?”
“I’m found something, Hank,” Carolyn told him, clutching a small piece of paper in her hand. “Drew didn’t recall purchasing anything at Home Depot the day of Veronica’s murder. In reality, he did. He bought a home improvement magazine. I found it in a brown paper sack, along with the receipt.”
“Not the kind of thing a man would buy who was about to murder his wife,” Hank answered, his voice tinged with disappointment. “Did it have a time stamp on it?”
“Eleven forty in the morning.”
“That falls within an hour of the time of death. The idiot forgot about something that could clear him. Did he pay with a credit card?”
“He did,” Carolyn told him. “I recognize his signature.”
“Who pays for a damn magazine with a credit card? Maybe this was his ace in the hole.”
“I doubt it, Hank. Veronica gave him a cash allowance. It wasn’t much, just enough for a week’s worth of lunches. Everything else went on the credit card. She liked to keep track of their spending habits.”
“We can prove that the threatening letter was written on the computer in his home,” Mary commented. “Between that and the shoe, do we have enough to take to Thomas?”
“It’s over,” Hank said. “The computer was in Jude’s room. It was obvious she used it because her homework was stored on it. Thomas will say Jude wrote the letter. Drew wearing a size eleven shoe and the heel imprint being close to the bruises on his daughter’s body won’t do much for us, either. Jude may have inflicted those injuries on herself. Charley said it didn’t appear that she was kicked or stomped because there was no indentation on any of the injuries. I’m sorry, but I can’t picture a killer slapping someone with a shoe.”
“I bet they’d accept that argument in San Francisco,” Mary said, laughing.
“Knock it off, Stevens,” Hank barked. “The chief hears you making gay jokes and you’ll be back in patrol by next week.”
“We lost, Hank,” she told him. “I’d rather laugh than cry.”
“Shit, maybe the guy deserves to walk,” the detective said. “Pack up everything we removed from the house and have Keith get it back here as fast as he can. Thomas will piss his pants if he finds out we executed the search warrant. If he comes looking for me, tell him I called in sick today. As soon as they put the house back together, CSI is going to clear. There was no search, understand? Are we all in agreement?”
Once they all answered yes, Mary disconnected. Everyone just sat there, trying to catch their breath. Carolyn picked through another box of items removed from Veronica’s house. She found a photo album that smelled like Veronica’s cologne, and opened it. The first picture was the two of them together. The sun was shining and they were making silly faces. They’d taken the kids to the zoo that day. “I miss you,” she said, rubbing her finger over the image.
Keith stood in front of her. “I need to take that.”
Carolyn picked up the box and turned around to hand it to him. When he tried to take it from her, she couldn’t let go. It was as if Veronica’s life had been reduced to a few plastic containers. All Carolyn had left of their friendship was memories. Soon even those would grow dim.
“I’m sorry,” Keith said, gently prying her fingers off the box.
Carolyn covered her mouth and rushed out of the room. When she reached the end of the corridor, she turned her face to the wall and sobbed. She wasn’t good at her job, as she’d boasted to Marcus. She wasn’t good at anything. Even after Veronica’s death, she had failed her precious friend. She should have let Jude leave that first night instead of interfering. And instead of supporting Drew, she had become his persecutor. Veronica’s children had been ripped from their home and shoved into the hands of a woman who didn’t want them. How could Carolyn make anything right when everything had gone so terribly wrong?
CHAPTER 25
Monday, October 18—5:15 P.M.
Carolyn returned to her office and went through the remaining cases, managing to concentrate long enough to assign at least half of them. The rest she placed in her briefcase to work on at home.
She called the jail and asked for Bobby Kirsh. When he came on the line, she said, “It’s me again, Bobby. Is Drew Campbell ready yet?”
“You’ve called here three times about this inmate,” he said. “I can’t decide if you plan to shoot the sucker when he walks out of here, or if something else is going on. He’s not a bad-looking guy. It wouldn’t be the first time, you know. Few years back, one of the female DAs fell for an armed robber. Weren’t you supposed to get married?”
“I had to call three times because the officer on duty never called me back. Drew Campbell is a friend. His arrest was a mistake. That’s why the DA withdrew the charges. Please, just tell me when he’s ready to be picked up.”
“We just finished his paperwork.”
“Don’t let him leave until I get there.” Carolyn grabbed her purse and briefcase and rushed out.
When Drew stepped through the security doors at the jail, he looked five years older and ten pounds lighter. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day Veronica was murdered. She recognized the grape juice stain on the front of his T-shirt. When he saw her, a look of surprise registered on his face. Carolyn set her things on the floor and hugged him. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this, Drew,” she said. “I came to give you a ride home. If you want, we can stop somewhere and get something to eat.”
He ran his hands through his silver hair. “When can I see my children?”
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��I called Emily this afternoon,” she said, picking up her things and walking with him toward the door. “As soon as you get settled again, she’ll bring them home. Have you talked to them?”
“Inmates aren’t allowed to make long-distance calls.” Drew tilted his head up to look at the stars. “I’ll never take all this for granted again. If only I had Veronica back…”
Carolyn took him by the elbow. For such a large man, he seemed so fragile. “I’m parked back here. It’s still early. We can call the kids from my cell phone if you want.”
Drew choked up, swiping at his teary eyes with the back of his hand. “I need some time to get myself together first. Where’s Jude? My attorney seemed to think she was staying with you.”
“She was for a while,” Carolyn told him. “I don’t know where she is right now, Drew. At least she finally told us the truth. I don’t think she realized there would be such serious consequences. To be honest, I’m probably the one who started this whole thing. When I saw the bruises on her body, I pressured her to tell me who was responsible. I guess she was so angry that you asked her to move out, she decided to get back at you.” She told him about the receipt she’d found from Home Depot, lying and telling him she’d found it when she’d gone to the house to pick up some of the children’s clothes. He didn’t need to know that Jude had overdosed on heroin. At least, not tonight. She was sick of lies and deception, but sometimes the truth was too painful.
“I don’t think you should go to the house, Drew,” Carolyn said, unlocking the Infiniti. “You’re welcome to stay with me for a few days. Marcus and I postponed the wedding. I decided it wouldn’t have been right without Veronica.”
“Thanks, but I’d like to sleep in my own bed. I need to plan the funeral tomorrow. I’m going to buy a family plot. You know, enough spots for all of us. If the kids don’t want them later on, I guess they can sell them. I know Veronica would want it that way.”
Revenge of Innocents Page 23
