It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

by Carr, Lauren

  Ira reported that when he asked Katrina if she knew where her husband was, she answered that he had fallen off the cliff to the rocks below. When Ira asked if he was still alive, she didn’t answer. The witness ran to his home and called the police.

  David read the signature of the officer who had taken Ira’s statement: Officer Arthur Bogart.

  “What’ve you got there that’s so interesting?” a deep voice asked from behind him.

  Startled to realize he was not alone, David turned around. Officer Art Bogart, who worked as the department’s desk sergeant, towered over him. The policeman peered around David to see what case file he had.

  Art, called Bogie by his colleagues, had the worn, haggard face and gray hair of a seasoned officer of the law, but the frame of a bodybuilder. Due to his advanced years, many a rookie dared to take him on in a hand-to-hand match, and ended up face down on a mat in a matter of seconds.

  One of Pat O’Callaghan’s most trusted patrolmen, Bogie had become David’s confidante since the police chief’s death.

  Stepping aside, David showed him the folder. “Niles Holt’s case file.”

  Bogie put on his reading glasses and bent over to see that he had been reading Ira Taylor’s statement. “Why are you suddenly interested in the Holt case?” He frowned.

  David responded, “Almost two years ago, you took a statement from a witness who said that he was fishing at the entrance of the trail leading up to Abigail’s Rock the morning Niles Holt died. He saw no one else go up on that trail. If no one was following them, then that means the killer had to have been waiting up at the rock for them. Why didn’t you pursue it?”

  Sighing heavily, Bogie leaned against the table and draped a leg across the corner. “David, you’ve known me most of your life. Do you think I would willingly let a murder go uninvestigated?”

  “That’s why I’m so surprised about this.”

  Bogie’s eyes narrowed. “Spencer’s first major crime since Phillips became chief is the Niles Holt murder. I took Taylor’s statement to Phillips. He said that he would check it out.” His chuckle held a wicked tone. “Check her out he did. He questioned Katrina Holt and the investigation ended there.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Phillips let the case go cold and he let it go cold for a reason.”

  “You could have fought him.”

  “I tried.” Bogie gestured up the stairs to the reception area. “How do you think I ended up up there? When I challenged Phillips, he took me off patrol and reduced me to clerk.” He laughed again. “But Phillips is stupider than I first gave him credit for. From where he put me, I see every piece of paper that comes into this department, including a certain contribution check to the department that Phillips used to renovate his office right after he dropped the Holt case. Katrina Holt signed it.”

  David’s face flushed. “Why would Katrina pay off Phillips? Her husband was murdered.” He felt a shiver go down his neck and his spine.

  “And she inherited about forty million dollars from his death.” Bogie peered down at him. “Right after she gave Phillips that check, she left town.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” David said. “She was being terrorized. He killed her husband. If the case hadn’t gone cold, she’d still be alive.”

  Bogie agreed that it didn’t make sense.

  A look of determination crossed David’s face. “Phillips may be too incompetent to know what to do with evidence, but I’m not.” He flipped through the pages of the case file. “We’ve got his DNA—”

  “Which isn’t worth anything without a suspect to match it up to,” Bogie said. “Besides, the DNA you got was from Katrina’s murder. Without evidence to connect the two murders, your perp ain’t going to do any time for doing her husband. That’s assuming you can catch him.”

  “I guess I have my work cut out for me.” David removed the forensics report from the file and leafed through the stapled pages.

  Bogie tried to read the contents over his shoulder. “If Phillips gets wind that you’re looking at this again he’s going to have your head.”

  David froze.

  “What? Did you find something?”

  David pulled back two pages bound with a single staple in the corner. “Look at this.” He scraped the upper corner with his fingertips and extracted two torn tabs of paper. “Someone removed a couple pages from the forensics report.” He flipped through the pages before and after the missing section. “It was the pages after the preliminary exam and before the ME’s conclusions.”

  “Phillips did find something and removed those pages to cover it up.” Bogie told him, “I’ll call the medical examiner and request they send us another copy.” He gathered up the folder and tucked it under his arm. He fell in behind David when they left the file room. “Don’t bother checking your e-mail. We have a virus.”

  David paused with his foot on the first step of the stairs leading up to the police chief’s office. “A virus? How? We have one of the best firewalls there is.”

  “The whole network’s down and our server is crashing. I called in some techs and they’re trying to save what they can. Someone managed to get a new virus in through the Internet.” Muttering, Bogie turned around to go to the lounge to get a cup of coffee. “I hate hackers.”

  Sucking up his courage, David returned to his office, where he picked up his private case file for Katrina Singleton’s murder. It contained bootleg copies of crime scene reports and his notes from unofficial interviews with witnesses. Then he went up to the third floor and down the oak hallway to Chief Roy Phillips’s office.

  David recalled that a short four years ago the walls in the reception area and chief’s office had been decorated with an assortment of commendations and pictures. The décor consisted of a hodgepodge collection of mementos accumulated during Pat O’Callaghan’s distinguished career, including a two-foot-long trout caught while on a fishing trip with his son.

  Roy Phillips had gutted the space to have the office reflect the new chief. The furniture changed from government issued to oak and brass. Expensive modern artwork took the place of the commendations.

  “Chief Phillips, I’ve run into some problems verifying your military background,” David heard a feminine voice say to the chief during a conversation that floated into the outer office from his private office.

  “Why are you checking into my military background?”

  “It’s background research for Travis’s book about Katrina,” the questioner explained. “Since you’re the chief detective for the case, your character will be very important to the plot.” Her tone challenged the commanding officer. “The V.A. doesn’t seem to know who you are.”

  Curious to hear Roy Phillips’s response, David stepped into the open doorway.

  Red blotches covered the chief’s face.

  Without seeing the face of the woman seated in his office, David identified the interrogator as Betsy Weaver, Travis Turner’s assistant. Rolls of fat from her buttocks and hips spilled over the arms of the chair too narrow for her wide bulk. Focused on getting an answer from the police chief, Betsy didn’t notice the witness to her interrogation. With her pen poised to record the chief’s response, she glared at the man behind the desk.

  “David, I’m glad you’re here.” Roy Phillips gestured for him to take the empty chair while turning his attention to the woman demanding answers from him. “I’m sorry, Ms. Weaver, but I have an appointment. If you would like to continue this interview, you can schedule an appointment with Officer Bogart.”

  Her expression lacked the chief’s congeniality. “I’ll do that.” She slapped her notepad shut and picked up her tattered handbag. Clutching her belongings to her chest, she rose from the chair, only to find that her bottom had become wedged between the arms. Before David could act, she plopped down and jumped back up to her feet. The quick action freed her. She scurried from the room with a hard expression on her face.

  “What’s Travis’s secreta
ry doing running background checks on me?” the police chief demanded to know.

  David sat in the chair opposite the one that had trapped Betsy. “Archie would often run background checks for Robin when she was researching a case. Take comfort. If Betsy had found something fishy, Travis would be here interrogating you personally.”

  The chief’s hand went from his mouth where he had been chewing on his thumb to his lap. He sat up straight and smoothed his hair. “Well, I have plenty of time since the computer system is down. What do you need, O’Callaghan?”

  David opened the folder he had picked up from his desk. “It’s the Singleton case.”

  “When are you going to let that go?”

  “The DNA from the body we found in the mine doesn’t match the DNA found on Katrina’s German shepherd. That proves he wasn’t at the murder scene.”

  “Where did you hear about the DNA?” The smile evaporated from the police chief’s face. The splotches on his face turned a brighter red.

  “I’ve been a cop in Spencer since high school,” David said. “I have a lot of friends.”

  “You have no authority to investigate this case.” The chief’s thumb flew to his mouth. He made a conscious effort to pull it out from between his teeth before biting it. “Listen, David, I tried to do you a favor. I tried to help you. If you don’t back off, you’re going to get yourself into trouble and I won’t be able to do anything to get you out.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” David asked. “Why have you been shutting me out of this case? Afraid that I was going to find conclusive evidence that Katrina wasn’t murdered by some run of the mill psycho, and prove you blew it when you didn’t find out who really was terrorizing her?”

  Roy’s eyes darkened. He looked him up and down. “Since you insist on going forward with this, I guess we have a murder investigation on our hands.”

  “You’ve had a murder investigation on your hands.”

  Roy Phillips stuck the tip of his pinkie finger into his mouth before removing it and crossing both arms across his chest as if to pin his hands down to keep them out of his mouth. “H-how well did you know Katrina Singleton, O’Callaghan?” he asked with a stutter in his voice.

  “If you must know, we knew each other most of our lives.”

  “Then she was a friend. H-how good of a friend?”

  David could see where the discussion was going. “We dated back in high school.”

  “Do you want to re-think that answer?” the police chief asked. “You see, I did look into Ms. Singleton’s murder and—and I found that you had reason to kill her.”

  “Me?”

  “Did you or did you not spend nights—?”

  “She didn’t like being alone in her home. Her husband was rarely there. You certainly didn’t do anything to help her.”

  “Were you intimate with her?”

  David opened his mouth to argue, but decided not to say anything.

  Chief Phillips said, “I-I tried to do you a favor by closing this case as quietly as possible, but you just couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  David blurted out. “You never wanted to do me any favors. You’ve been trying to run me out of this department for months.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, O’Callaghan,” the chief replied. “Did you sleep with Katrina?”

  Chapter Six

  The Singleton’s back yard showed signs of once having been meticulously landscaped. Remnants of the previous year’s plantings struggled to survive in spite of neglect since their mistress’s death. Sand mixed with dirt along the lake’s shore made up what had once been a private beach. Shaded by the second-level deck, a stone patio extended out into the back yard.

  With the copy of the case file that Ben Fleming had given him tucked under his arm, Mac followed Archie over the stone wall separating Spencer Manor from the Singleton home, and jogged across the back yard to the patio. He peered through the French doors into what had once been Katrina Singleton’s family room while Gnarly went to work digging in the corner of the patio where the cobblestones, grass, and garage met. The foot and a half deep hole appeared to be an ongoing project.

  “Gnarly!” Mac swatted in the dog’s direction. “Get away from there!”

  Whining, Gnarly backed away two paces before charging back at the hole.

  “There must be a rabbit in there. Leave him alone,” Archie told Mac. “No one will know that we’ve been here.” She threw open the French door, stepped inside, and punched a security code into the console on the wall.

  Uncertain about the wisdom of snooping around a crime scene that didn’t belong to him, Mac stepped across the threshold into the vacant family room. “How do you know the security code?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Since the killer didn’t trigger the security system the night Katrina was murdered,” Mac pointed out, “you knowing the code makes you a suspect.”

  “The security system wasn’t deactivated or triggered the night of the murder.” She grinned widely. “That’s one of the mysteries. The killer managed to bypass the system every time all the way up to the murder.”

  Outside, she gestured at an oblong ceramic flower container next to the door. It contained soil, but no vegetation. “That‘s where David found Gnarly. He had crawled in behind the pot. The pot and roof from the deck above protected him from the blizzard.”

  Mac knelt next to the pot. There were brown splotches of what he concluded to be a mixture of Gnarly’s and the killer’s blood. The German shepherd had put up a real fight for his owner.

  Once again, Gnarly was digging at the corner of the garage.

  “Stop it!”

  The dog uttered a pleading bark.

  “You’re going to get us arrested for breaking and entering.”

  “We’re not breaking anything,” Archie argued.

  “He’s breaking their yard.” Mac rose and searched the trees and privacy fence separating the Singleton property from the Hardwicks. He spotted the camera perched on a rod extending up from the corner of the Hardwick’s back deck. It was aimed at the Singleton property. He saw a bright green light lit on top of the unit. “David said the Hardwicks claimed their security camera was broken at the time of the murder. It looks like it’s working to me.”

  “Maybe they got it fixed since the murder.” She stepped back inside.

  Mac followed her through the door. The room contained a fireplace and bar, behind which a mirror stretched across the rear wall. Unlike the stone floors in his home, the Singletons’ floors were hardwood. Since his first wife’s death, Chad Singleton had removed all the furnishings to put the house on the market.

  The click-clack sound echoing throughout the empty room startled both of them. Ready to run when caught trespassing, they whirled around to the open door. His nose to the floor, Gnarly made a sweep of the room before coming to a stop near the bar. With his snout following the scent of his dead mistress, he circled the area before lying down with a whine.

  “This is where she was killed.” Archie knelt next to the dog.

  Doubtful, Mac compared the crime scene pictures to the placement of the patio doors and the floor next to the bar where Gnarly rested his head between his front paws.

  It proved to be the spot.

  Mac continued to examine the rest of the pictures in the folder while imagining how the murder happened.

  “We can assume that there’s no evidence left since Chad had the place professionally cleaned,” Archie said.

  “The first rule in investigating is to never assume anything,” he said. “If there’s nothing left, how did Gnarly lead us here by her scent? I thought he was outside when the murder happened.”

  Archie went to the patio door. “Maybe he saw the murder through the door, which would have been locked. When he wasn’t able to get in to save her, Gnarly ambushed the killer when he left.”

  Mac opened and shut the patio door. “Did Katrina give the pass code to an
yone besides David? Her husband had to have had it. Who else could she have given it to?”

  “David told me that Katrina changed the code after almost every incident,” she said.

  “How did you get the pass code?”

  “Hacking,” Archie confessed. “But if you go to the security company, they’ll have record of the alarm being deactivated just now when I punched in the code. The night of the murder, the security company claims the only break in the system was when she let Gnarly outside. There is no record of any break, deactivations, or trip in the system after that.”

  Once again, Mac opened and closed the door while studying the lights on the panel for the security system. He glanced over his shoulder to where Gnarly marked the murder spot.

  Referring to the pictures of Katrina’s dead body and the overturned recliner, he crossed the room. Mentally, he uprighted the recliner and stood where it would have been. Standing over the spot Gnarly marked for them, he shuffled through the photos until he came to one of Katrina’s body sprawled on the floor. “Okay, Archie, I want you to lie down here and play dead for me.”

  “Why me?” she objected.

  “Because you’re a girl. The murder victim was a woman. If it was a guy, I’d play dead but—” He stopped when he saw her pointing to where Gnarly was lying on his back with his paws up in the air.

  “There,” she said. “Gnarly’s playing dead for us.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Mac told him.

  The cell phone in her pocket interrupted Archie’s laughter. She whipped it out and pressed it to her ear.