Certain Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “The lawyer from the county attorney’s office?”

  “Yeah, that’s what her friends told me. At least she used to be with Slocum’s office. She went into private practice a few years back,” Anderson said.

  Jefferson turned to look at the front door, silently thought for a moment then muttered, “No shit, huh? That’s interesting.” He turned back to Anderson and quietly said, “Keep this to yourself for now. I’ll go take a look.”

  “Marston’s down there now,” Anderson said referring to Clyde Marston, a doctor with the medical examiner’s office.

  The cop at the door took down his name and badge number then he entered the house and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves. There were already four CSU cops going through the house. One in the living room as Jefferson passed through. Jefferson went down the basement stairs and found the ME kneeling in front of the body. The instant he saw her the light in his head came on as he recognized the scene. He quickly walked over to her and stood staring at her for several seconds.

  Seated on the bare, concrete floor of the unfinished basement was the naked body of Rhea Watson. Her legs were extended before her, her back against the bare cinderblock wall and her arms stretched out to her sides, the hands having been nailed into the wall. The nails in her hands had been driven into the cinderblock and on her head she wore a double strand of barbed wire as a crown. Her chest and stomach were covered in her own blood and her head was tilted forward, her chin covering the gash across her throat.

  “I need to talk to you,” Jefferson said to Marston. “And you two guys also,” he told the CSU techs working the basement. “Come here a minute, please.”

  “Have you ever seen this before?” Marston asked him.

  “Listen,” he said to all three of them ignoring the question. “Not a word of this leaks out to anybody.” He pointed at the body and continued. “We need to put a lid on this. No details to the media, other cops, your wife, girlfriend or mom. You got it?”

  “It’s going to get out, Owen,” one of the CSU guys said.

  “I know, Rick. But we need to keep it quiet as long as we can. At least a couple days to give me a chance to check into some things.”

  “Okay,” they all said.

  Jefferson spent a few minutes walking around the basement. He examined the chairs where she had been tied up and her killer sat. He then turned back to the M.E. and asked to speak with him.

  “Tell me about the fingers and the toes,” Jefferson said.

  “How did you know…?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “They’re all broken, probably with a pair of pliers of some kind. Owen, he tortured her. From the look of the coagulation of the blood on her fingers, I’d say he took at least a couple of hours. Sadistic bastard. She probably passed out a few times then he would wake her to do some more. Look at this,” Marston continued pointing a gloved finger at two marks on the left hand side of the body. “Taser burns. That’s how he took her down.”

  “Okay,” Jefferson said while staring at the spots. “For now, this is a burglary gone bad. You got a time of death?”

  “I’d guess the TOD was between ten and two last night. I can nail it down a little better when I get her back to the lab.”

  “Okay. Give me a call when you know more.”

  Jefferson hurried up the stairs and back outside. He found Norm Anderson again and gestured for him to come to him.

  “Norm, have you told anyone anything about this? The body or what you found or didn’t find in the house?”

  “No, Owen. I told you before; I called it in as a homicide but no details. Why, what’s up?”

  “For now, this is a burglary gone bad, okay? You keep the condition and posture of the body to yourself. Nothing to the media or anyone else.”

  “Sure,” a puzzled Anderson said, “whatever you want.”

  The woman detective who had interviewed the two women approached the two men.

  “We’ll start canvassing the neighborhood. Do you have a time frame?” she asked Jefferson.

  “Last night. Probably between eight and two,” he shrugged. “Listen, Marcie, I want you to do something. You go gather up the guys to start the canvass and as you do it, casually make a call to Stan Abramson in burglary. You know Stan?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she answered.

  “Tell Stan we have a burglary gone bad homicide here. Make sure the uniforms hear you.”

  “Okay,” she said with a puzzled look.

  “I want one of them to leak that to the media. I don’t know which one will and I don’t care. I just want that story to get out through the back door. Tell Stan I’ll call him later.”

  “You’re the boss,” Marcie said then turned to carry out her instructions.

  Jefferson shook hands with Norm Anderson and walked back across the lawn to his car. When he got there, just before he got in, he took a quick look over the crowd of seventy or eighty people who had gathered across the street. Among the many faces he glanced at one that he should have noticed was out of place in this upscale neighborhood. Looking back at the detective through large aviator sunglasses and wearing a decent disguise was the brutal man who spent the previous evening being entertained by Rhea Watson’s fear, pain and death.

  EIGHTEEN

  “What do you think?” Selena Kane asked her subordinate, Owen Jefferson as he lowered his long frame onto the seat in front of her desk. It was three days after the murder of Rhea Watson. Due to scheduling conflicts, this was the first chance the two of them had to discuss the case. “You think we have a serial on our hands?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Jefferson answered her. “Watson and Judge Smith were almost certainly killed by the same person or persons. The crime scenes and the way the bodies were staged are exact. The only difference being, Watson was naked and Smith was fully clothed.”

  “No evidence of sexual assault?”

  “No. There was a damp towel on the floor of Watson’s bedroom suggesting he caught her coming out of the shower. We’re looking for a connection between the two victims. So far it doesn’t look like they even knew each other.”

  “What about a professional connection. He was a judge, she was a lawyer?”

  “Yeah,” Jefferson continued nodding his head a few times. “We’re looking into that too. But he was on the court of appeals and was never on the trial bench. Rhea Watson did trials but never handled appeals. As far as we can tell, they never even met each other.”

  “What about appeals that he handled of cases she tried? Guilty verdicts that were appealed and he was the judge that upheld the verdict?” Kane asked.

  “Shit,” Jefferson quietly said as he sat up thinking about what his boss had suggested. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Have Jeff Miller, the department’s computer whiz, see what he can find.”

  “There could be a ton of them,” Jefferson said. “But it’s a place to start. Good catch, Boss.”

  “Did you look at her ex-husband?” Kane asked.

  “Sure. He was the first one on the list. I took Bob Hagan with me,” Jefferson answered referring to another detective. “The husband was pretty shocked and upset. He seemed genuine. We talked to her co-workers, especially her secretary. They all agreed, as did the ex that the divorce was amicable. Plus, he’s remarried.”

  “What about money? Who inherits?”

  “The son and he was in school at Northwestern in Chicago. Chicago cops verified it for us. He’s alibied.

  “When the story and her picture hit the news, we started getting calls from men who had met her recently through a dating site. We’ve interviewed all of them and they all said the same thing. They met her for one date, they didn’t hit it off and that was that. No hard feelings. Plus none of them even knew her last name. The only way they communicated was online by email. She was out on such a date the night she was killed.”

  “Oh,” Kane said, her eyes opening wider as she leaned forward on her desk.

&n
bsp; “Forget it,” Jefferson said seeing her reaction. “He came forward too. I got his name and information but we checked it out. They were at a restaurant for about an hour. He went to the john and she left when he did.”

  “That’s kind of cold. Didn’t it make him mad?”

  “You would’ve run out on this guy too. Besides, the bartender verified the guy stayed until midnight,” Jefferson replied.

  “How do you know you got all of the men she met through this dating site?”

  “We brought in her computer from home and went through all of the emails and anything having to do with it. We’re pretty confident that we matched up the men with the one’s she was communicating with online. Looks like she was just shopping a bit.”

  “What about her work computer?”

  “The law firm wouldn’t let us have it without a court order. Her secretary and supervisor went through all of her emails and they assured us there was nothing in them about dating or anything that might point to someone,” Jefferson answered.

  “You believe them?”

  Jefferson shrugged and said, “We have no reason not to. They’ve all been very cooperative except when it comes to privileged client information.”

  “Anybody else we should look at?” Kane asked.

  “Not so far. We’ll keep checking but most of the people she knew were lawyers and judges. Not exactly murder suspect types. I still think our best bet is to find a link between her and the judge.”

  Jefferson started to get up from his chair but Kane held up a hand to stop him.

  “There’s something else, Owen,” she said. “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to take Marcie Sterling under your wing and work with you on this.”

  “Okay, no problem,” Jefferson said. “But it will probably take more than the two of us if this is what we think it might be. We’ll see.”

  Later that afternoon, Jefferson sat watching the newly minted detective, Marcie Sterling. He was sitting at his desk, his left elbow on the desktop, his left hand covering his mouth and hiding the smile.

  Marcie had personally spent most of the day the body was found walking the neighborhood where Rhea Watson had lived. She had been promoted to detective less than six months ago and had been assigned to homicide for only two weeks. Unknown to her, Selena Kane had specifically requested the assignment in an effort to get more women moving up the department’s ladder.

  Marcie was a single woman, no children, who had decided on a career in law enforcement at age sixteen. She had graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul with a B.A from their Criminal Justice Program and was immediately hired by the Minneapolis Police Department.

  Like any other cop, she had paid her dues riding patrol through bad neighborhoods nights and weekends. Barely three months on the job, Marcie and three other cops had answered a bar fight call in South Minneapolis. While breaking up the fight one of the drunks had punched her squarely in the forehead. Before the other three cops, all men, could react, Marcie had used her kickboxing training to put her much larger assailant face down on the sidewalk. Marcie Sterling had taken a huge leap toward earning the respect of every cop in the MPD.

  Jefferson continued watching with amusement as she struggled to move her personal belongings to the desk adjacent to his. Fifteen minutes ago he had told her she was assigned to him and the Watson investigation. She tried to hide it but her excitement was obvious.

  While Marcie was finishing putting her things in and on the desk butting up against Jefferson’s, a slight figure in short-sleeve shirt buttoned to the throat entered the room. He was carrying a six-inch high stack of papers and went straight to Jefferson’s desk. When he reached the detective’s desk he dropped the pile of paper in front of Jefferson. It hit the desktop with a loud thud.

  “What’s this?” Jefferson asked. Ignoring the sergeant’s question, Jeff Miller, the department’s number one computer geek, turned to Marcie, smiled and said hello to her.

  “Jeff,” Jefferson said. “What’s this?”

  “You wanted all the cases Judge Smith handled on appeal that Rhea Watson tried and won. Here they are. There are seventy-four,” Miller answered. He picked up a few pages from the top of the pile, handed them to Jefferson and said, “This is a list of the names. Case names and numbers; names of defendants and all of the lawyers and judges. That includes all of the judges involved in the appeal and the trial judge. The rest of the pile are copies of the decisions. I thought you’d want those too.”

  “I didn’t think there would be this many,” Jefferson slowly, quietly said while looking over the stack of papers.

  “Jeff,” Marcie interjected, “can you go back and run a query to find out how many of those people are still alive? The judges, lawyers, defendants, everybody?” She looked across the desks at Jefferson and said, “Maybe we can narrow it down.” She looked at Miller again and added, “Can you check to see how many of the crooks are still in jail?” Turning back to Jefferson she said, “I assume we’re thinking about dirtbags with a score to settle.”

  “Good point,” Jefferson said. “We’ll start on this,” Jefferson continued as he held up the papers he was holding. “Let us know about the dead and still incarcerated ones as soon as you can.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” Jeff said but he was looking at Marcie. “I’ll get right on it.”

  Miller left and Jefferson handed half of the list of names across his desk to Marcie. He set the pile of court case decisions aside and said, “We might as well get started.”

  “Okay,” Marcie replied. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Look for violent crimes first. Look for guys who were convicted of serious crimes. Then check them out on our database,” he continued referring to the desktop computer with arrest and conviction records. “Let’s see if we can find some with a history.”

  The two of them started going down their separate lists checking each individual’s conviction and then his background. After an hour of this Jefferson stood up to stretch, looked across the cheap government issued desks at his new partner and said, “How are you doing?”

  Sterling sighed and moved her head back and forth a few times to work out the kink in her neck from staring at the screen. She looked up at the tall black man and said, “I’m not really eliminating anyone. Even guys convicted of drug crimes. You check their record and there are arrests and convictions for other things, including violent acts.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jefferson agreed as he sat down again. He stared across the desks at Marcie for several seconds without speaking, obviously in thought. “Burglars,” he quietly said as if speaking to himself. “He got past Watson’s alarm…”

  “Assuming it was on,” Sterling said.

  “Still we should be looking at guys with a history of burglary first then expand as we need to.”

  “Okay,” Sterling agreed. “I had a couple of them,” she continued as she leafed through the pages she had completed. She looked back at Jefferson and said, “Although, any of these people could learn about committing a burglary while locked up in a criminal academy.”

  “True,” Jefferson agreed. “But it’s still a place to start.”

  At that moment Jefferson had a thought about a specific name he wanted to check. Using his right index finger on the pages of names, he quickly scanned down the list.

  “Holy shit,” he quietly said when he found what he was looking for. “Here he is, Howard Traynor.”

  “Who’s Howard Traynor?” Marcie asked.

  Before answering, Jefferson picked up his phone and quickly skimmed through his call list, found the number he wanted and dialed it. While it rang he looked at Marcie and held up his index finger in a gesture requesting that she wait a moment.

  “Hey, Owen,” Tony Carvelli said. “What’s up?”

  “Are you still on Howie Traynor?”

  “Yeah, we are. But I’m about to give it up, why?”

  “You heard about Rhea Watson?”

  “S
ure, but if you’re thinking it was Howie, forget it. I already checked. We put him to bed just before eleven that night.”

  “Shit,” a dejected Jefferson said into the phone. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, Tommy Evans was on him that night. He waited until the lights and TV went off. This guy is so boring I don’t think we can justify spending Vivian’s money on this much longer.”

  “Do you have your surveillance records with you?”

  “Yeah, you want me to check one?”

  “Yes, the night that judge was killed up in Bemidji,” Jefferson said. He gave Carvelli the date and time of death from the autopsy report and waited while Carvelli checked.

  “Found it,” Carvelli said. “Same thing. He got home that day about noon and never left. And Sorenson was on him until midnight. Next day, Maddy Rivers picked him up when he left for church at nine.”

  “Okay,” Jefferson said. “I guess that takes care of Howie.”

  “You thinking somebody is out for revenge?” Carvelli asked.

  “It’s a place to start,” Jefferson answered. “If you think of anyone…”

  “…I’ll let you know,” Carvelli finished the thought.

  NINETEEN

  Madeline Rivers waited for the red light to change on Seventh Street and Second Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. She was on Seventh, a one-way heading west, watching Howie Traynor drive into a parking ramp past the intersection a half-block ahead of her on the left side of Seventh. Maddy was in the left hand lane and there were two cars ahead of her waiting for the light.

  Maddy had been on station at Howie’s apartment before seven that morning. Never one to be an early bird, the effort to get out of bed early enough to be there was almost painful. The night before Tony Carvelli and she had met with Vivian Donahue to discuss the surveillance of Traynor. Vivian had been adamant that it continue to the point where she actually threatened to hire someone else if need be. Tony had mentioned the call he received from Owen Jefferson concerning Rhea Watson and the murder of Judge Smith outside Bemidji. With that news, Vivian was even more certain to continue following Howie.