Revenge of Innocents

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Carolyn went to the waiting room, then changed her mind and headed to the hospital’s chapel to pray.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tuesday, October 19—1:45 A.M.

  Once Marcus pried the boards off the window at Drew’s house, he shone his spotlight on the frame to see if there were any remaining glass fragments. The window opened into the breakfast nook area of the kitchen, so it was large enough for him to crawl through. Satisfied he wouldn’t get cut, he entered the residence. “Drew, it’s Marcus,” he shouted. “We’ve been trying to reach you.”

  Hearing no response, he flipped on the light switch and made his way into the living room. Just like Carolyn had thought, Drew was passed out on the sofa and the coffee table was littered with empty beer cans. Marcus tried the overhead light in the living room, but nothing happened.

  He shook Drew by the shoulder. He didn’t respond. He was lying on his side facing the back of the sofa. “Come on, man,” Marcus said. “Wake the hell up. Jude’s been in an accident. You need to go to the hospital.”

  The idiot had drunk himself into a stupor. Marcus didn’t have much tolerance for boozers. He might have done the same thing, though, if he’d just been released from jail. Strangely, he didn’t smell alcohol. Generally when a guy was this tanked, you could smell him twenty feet away. Rolling Drew onto his back, he aimed the flashlight at his face.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed, jumping back several feet.

  Drew had what appeared to be a gunshot wound in the center of his forehead. Marcus placed his finger on his neck to check for a pulse. When he felt nothing, he knew he was dead. The way his skin felt, he must have been dead for hours.

  Marcus moved away from the body and stood perfectly still, afraid to touch anything now that it was a crime scene. He started to call Carolyn, but then realized that would be foolish. Using his cell phone, he called 911 instead. “You should notify Hank Sawyer and Mary Stevens,” he told the male dispatcher. “Detective Stevens was in the ER at the medical center, but I don’t know her cell phone number.”

  “We’ll take care of it, sir,” the man said. “Just sit tight until the officers get there. Do you think the assailant might still be in the house?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus whispered, his voice shaking. He was a computer programmer. He had a license to carry a gun, but he didn’t have it on him. The only time he’d seen a dead body was on TV or in the movies. “I haven’t looked around. Should I? The only thing I have to use as a weapon is a crowbar.”

  “Listen to me,” the dispatcher said. “Where are you in the house?”

  “The living room.”

  “How did you come in?”

  “Through a window in the kitchen.”

  “So the window was open when you arrived?”

  “No,” Marcus said. “I pried the boards off. The dead man’s daughter’s been seriously injured. When we couldn’t get him on the phone, we thought he was asleep. You’re not going to charge me with a crime, I hope. I told Detective Stevens what I was going to do, and she said it was all right.”

  “Remain calm,” the dispatcher advised. “Quietly leave the house the same way you entered. The assailant is probably gone, but it might make you feel better to wait outside. Don’t hang up. I’ll stay on the phone with you until the officers arrive.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, tracing his steps back to the kitchen and climbing out the open window. “I’m out. I’m going to lock myself in my car. It’s a green Range Rover. At night it looks black. I’m parked in the driveway.”

  He heard sirens in the distance, and then they stopped. When he told the dispatcher, he informed him that the officers responding had turned the sirens off just in case the suspect was still in the area.

  A short time later, two black-and-whites skidded to a stop in front of the house, and two officers climbed out of each car with their guns drawn. Marcus got out of the Range Rover and raced over to them. “I’m Marcus Wright, the man who called. Man, am I glad to see you guys!”

  “Is that your car?” a large officer with sergeant stripes asked, gesturing toward the Range Rover. Marcus told him it was and he instructed him to drive to the corner and wait. “Someone will talk to you as soon we secure the area. Detective Sawyer says he knows you. He’s en route.”

  Four hours had passed. It was a few minutes past six. The sun was up, and the house Veronica and Drew Campbell had lived in was once again swarming with police personnel. After Marcus had given his statement to Hank, he’d left to pick up Jude and bring her to the hospital so Carolyn wouldn’t worry about her.

  “They reattached Jude’s arm,” Mary told Hank. “They won’t know if it’s going to work for several days. The biggest problem is infection. Carolyn said they put her in a drug-induced coma to give her body a chance to heal.”

  “Poor kid,” he said. “Now both of her parents are dead. Who’s going to take care of her?”

  “There’s three other children in San Francisco,” Mary reminded him. “I guess the sister will have to bone up on her parenting skills. Carolyn told me Veronica had made provisions in her will for her to raise her children if something happened to both her and Drew. Were you aware of this?”

  “That was years ago,” Hank said. “Back when Carolyn was married to Frank. Veronica probably changed her will. I think their friendship was strained because of Carolyn’s promotion.”

  “People don’t update their wills, Hank, especially people who don’t have a lot of money.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t force another person to raise your children. Carolyn would ruin her life if she took on that kind of responsibility. Those kids should be with a relative. Drew was insured for the same amount as Veronica. That’s four mil. Don’t kid yourself. Emily’s a personal injury attorney. Those people are sharks when it comes to money. She’ll jump on it, buy herself a big house, and hire a dozen nannies.”

  One of the crime scene investigators walked past. “I almost didn’t recognize you, Mary. You’re not wearing your red murder shirt today.”

  “No shit,” she said, turning back to her conversation with Hank. “What in the name of God are we dealing with?”

  Hank stopped a patrol officer, hitting him up for a cigarette and a book of matches, then stepping outside so he could fire up. “Don’t say a word,” he told Mary, blowing out the match and taking a long drag. “I know what we do have. Mountains of work ahead of us. This cigarette is probably the closest I’ll get to enjoying myself until this monster of a case is put to bed.”

  “You quit smoking ten years ago,” Mary said, shaking her head. “Are you going to dive back into the bottle again, too? Then you can destroy both your liver and your lungs. Why did you lose all that weight and start working out if you were going to revert to your old habits?”

  Hank started coughing. He reluctantly dropped the cigarette on the sidewalk and stubbed it out with his heel. “You caused that to happen by harping on me. I guess you don’t want to make sergeant.” He saw a local news van parked across the street, along with several reporters standing behind the police tape.

  Mary’s eyes brightened. “I’d love to make sergeant.”

  “Check back in about five years. Maybe by then you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut. Let’s go see what Charley and the forensic guys have for us. It’s turning into a zoo out here. Standing around bemoaning our plight isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

  “You’re the one wasting time smoking and complaining.”

  Hank turned around and snapped at her. “I can’t think with you running your mouth all the time.”

  “How can either of us think when we haven’t had more than a few hours of sleep since Veronica was murdered? We’ve got to get the captain to assign us more people, Hank. There’s too much to do and not enough people to do it.”

  “As if I don’t know that,” he said. “Give me some space. You’re beginning to get on my nerves.”

  Darryl Bates, one of the forensic techs, met the detectiv
es in the living room. “I went over the Explorer, Lieutenant. I couldn’t find anything that would indicate it had been involved in an injury accident. No blood, tissue, or damage to the vehicle of any kind. No sign it’s been washed recently. The interior stinks of spoiled milk, so I doubt if Campbell has driven it since he got out of jail.”

  “Good work,” Hank told him. “Tow it to the lab and rip it apart. If there’s a drop of blood anywhere in that car, I want to know about it.”

  When Bates walked off, Mary said, “What are the odds that Drew ran over Jude, then a few hours later, someone came in and shot him?”

  Hank glared at her, but didn’t bother to reprimand her again. She would have ignored him, anyway. She was the most relentless person he’d ever worked with, one of the reasons she was such a good detective. She’d ride a case to the ground. Dr. Martha Ferguson, the forensic pathologist he’d been seeing for the past year, had a similar personality. “You know who you remind me of?” he asked her. “Martha.”

  “I consider that a compliment,” Mary said. “I still can’t believe you two got together. When you first met her, you couldn’t stand her. You called her an obsessive bitch, remember?”

  Hank gave her a sly smile. “That’s before I saw her without clothes. The only time she isn’t telling me what to do is when we’re in bed. That’s why we have sex so much.”

  Mary laughed, punching him in the arm. “No wonder you’re so full of yourself lately. I didn’t think you had it in you, Hank.”

  The detective cut his eyes to her. “I may not be young like you, but I’m not dead.”

  Charley Young was peeling off his gloves. “I estimate the victim’s been dead since nine or ten last night. He must have been asleep when the killer gained entrance into the residence. Whoever it was rolled him over, shot him at close range, then turned him back to his original position. The cushions on the sofa muffled the gunshot, which is why none of the neighbors heard anything. My bet is this is the person who killed the wife. The bullet wound is in the same exact position.”

  “Why didn’t he shoot him in the back of the head if he was asleep?” Mary asked. “Why wake him up and turn him over? He put himself at risk of getting into a struggle. Drew was a big man.”

  “He wanted to look him in the eye,” Hank told her. “The Snodgrass girl was buried alive. The killer gets turned on by this stuff. It makes him feel powerful to kill someone. He wants to drag it out as long as possible. Did forensics find anything in or around the body?”

  “No,” Charley said. “All they found was a smattering of talcum powder on the victim’s shirt. The killer must have worn gloves. If we do find anything, it will probably be something that will only show up under a microscope. This guy is a professional. How did he get into the house, by the way? Carolyn’s fiancé said he’s the one who removed the boards from the window, so he didn’t come in that way.”

  “There’s no signs of forced entry anywhere,” Mary told him. “He either had a key, or he had one of those devices that can be programmed to open any garage door. You said he was a professional. Do you mean an assassin?”

  “Not necessarily,” the pathologist said. “Just someone who’s proficient in the use of firearms and controlled enough to make certain he doesn’t leave any evidence. You didn’t find much at the scene of his wife’s murder, did you?”

  Mary gestured for Hank to step aside. “We were all over this place yesterday. Most of the evidence that’s going to turn up will link back to cops. Kevin Thomas will be furious when he finds out we executed that search warrant when we knew the case against Drew was dead. We’ll be lucky if we manage to keep our jobs.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Hank said, pulling out a toothpick. “Why do you think I’m in such a piss-poor mood? The only way to cover ourselves is to screen anything related to our people before we book it into evidence. Keep in mind that we need a suspect in custody, which we don’t have at the moment, nor does it appear that we’re going to have one in the very near future. We also have to be able to prove that this person is guilty. Right now, we don’t have any of those things, so why waste our time sweating a wimp like Kevin Thomas?” He paused, massaging his forehead. “No man is ever going to marry you. You’re too much of a headache.”

  Mary placed her hands on her hips. “Thanks,” she said. “Maybe I have no desire to get married because most men are idiots. The search we conducted yesterday was a disaster, Hank. We were in such a race against the clock, there’s no telling how many people traipsed in and out of this place. It’ll take us until Christmas to process all the evidence that doesn’t belong to Drew or the killer.”

  “Write everything up and hand-carry it to Lou Redfield at the DA’s office. With these new crimes, we should be able to get a warrant to search Don Snodgrass’s residence. I also want him brought in for questioning. He’s the only suspect we have right now. We’ve got three homicides. This so-called accident with Jude could be an attempted murder. No matter how far you stretch it, everything seems to lead back to that girl.”

  “What about Reggie Stockton?” Mary asked. “Carolyn believes he’s our man. She put together a plausible premise as to how it all fits together. The only problem was both Haley and Jude being sexually active at a young age, which supported your belief that we were dealing with a pedophilia ring. Now that Drew has been killed and Jude seriously injured, there’s a chance that both of you may be right.”

  “How’s that?” Hank asked, stepping aside to allow the men from the coroner’s office to carry the body out. “Damn, they’ve got the news chopper hovering over the house. What were you saying? You’ll have to speak louder.”

  “Let’s say Drew gets out and goes looking for Jude,” Mary shouted.

  “I still can’t hear you. Close the door.”

  Mary did what he said, but she knew it was wasted energy. Forensics was starting to transfer evidence from the house to their vans. For the moment, though, it did reduce the noise level. “Carolyn claimed Drew didn’t act upset about the way things went down when she picked him up last night. Maybe he wasn’t upset because Jude was telling the truth. We need to take a look at Carolyn’s phone records, as well as the jail’s, see if Drew could have called Jude and threatened to get back at her when he got out. She fell apart after Thomas admitted that her father might be acquitted. Jude’s a smart girl, Hank. She knew her criminal record would detract from her credibility, along with her drug use and promiscuity. When we told her she was free to go, her demeanor changed. She was probably terrified.”

  “I knew you were going to blame me,” Hank said, frowning. “How did I know she was going to sneak out the back entrance, or that she’d lift the court reporter’s wallet? I figured even if Gary Conrad lost her, without any money she couldn’t get far. The whole point was that she might lead us to Stockton.”

  “Let’s say you’re right and Don Snodgrass and Drew were both pedophiles,” Mary went on. “They started molesting their daughters as children and somehow got together.” She snatched a coffeecup out of the hands of one of the forensic officers. “Thanks, Gretchen. I need this more than you. I’ll buy you lunch as soon as I find time to eat.” She took a swallow, moistening her scratchy throat. “It must be eighty degrees in here, Hank. Did the Santa Anas blow in again?”

  “Body heat,” Hank said. “We must have fifteen people crammed in this place, along with a truckload of equipment. At least we got the corpse out. He was beginning to get ripe.”

  Mary removed a red scarf from her back pocket and tied it around her head to use as a sweatband. “What if either Jude or both the girls started threatening to expose their fathers? There’s a good chance the men swapped them or forced them to have sex with each other, then made their own child pornography. This might be the reason they were inseparable. No one else knew their horrible secret. At the same time, a history like that could have caused them to be fiercely competitive.”

  “Makes sense,” Hank said. “B
ut where does Stockton fit in?”

  “Stockton is the avenger.”

  “Excuse me,” the detective tossed out. “This isn’t a comic strip.”

  “Shut up and listen,” Mary said. “Both girls dated Stockton, probably slept with him, did drugs with him, maybe even at the same time. In case you don’t know, the greatest male fantasy is a threesome.”

  Hank looked down at his shoes. He wondered if Martha had a girlfriend who might be persuaded. He was getting excited just thinking about it. He had to remind himself he was at a murder scene.

  “Uh-huh,” Mary said, jutting one hip out. “Now you know why I’m not married. Can you get your mind back on police work?”

  “I thought I saw something strange on the floor.”

  “Sure you did.” She waited until she had his complete attention. “Stockton’s a handsome, fit black guy from New Orleans, a city that’s known to have more criminals than citizens.”

  “That’s before Katrina,” Hank said. “Half of them either died, escaped, or set up business somewhere else on federal money.”

  “I asked you to listen.”

  He smiled. “No, you didn’t. You told me to shut up. You can’t talk like that to a superior officer. Keep it up and you’ll be back in uniform.”

  “You can’t afford to lose me. I have the best handle on this case. Can I continue please? Say Jude and Haley tell Stockton their sordid stories. Stockton brags about how he escaped from jail, and maybe even describes some of the crimes he’s committed. These three had something in common. They all had things to hide. So either one or both of the girls ask Stockton to kill their fathers. Things go haywire somewhere along the way, and Haley and Veronica end up dead. Jude, coached by Stockton, tells us just enough to get her father thrown in jail.”

  “Can’t kill a guy if he’s in jail.”

  Mary scrunched up her face. “Drew didn’t stay in jail, did he? Stockton used Drew to take the heat off. Then when Jude retracts her accusations, knowing this will result in her father’s release, Stockton is poised to move in for the kill. Jude could have sweetened the pot with the cash and airline tickets. Stockton knew the jig was up once we got his fingerprints. He knew if he didn’t disappear, he’d end up in prison.”