Secrets, Lies & Alibis

by Patricia H. Rushford

  Kevin licked his lips. “First of all, God didn’t give your mother cancer. Cancer is part of our imperfect world. Was your mother a believer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how do you know she didn’t pray for God to take her?

  Maybe she was in a lot of pain at the end.” Kevin glanced down at his hands. “As for your dad, God gives everyone free will—we make our own choices. He didn’t force your father to drink. In fact, I imagine God worked very hard to get him to stop.”

  “Humph.” Mac shook his head.

  Kevin loosened his tie and tossed a knowing smile in Mac’s direction. “I can see you’re not buying it. That’s okay.” He opened his briefcase and lifted out the Bible. “Your answers are all right here, buddy, if you’ll just take the time to read it.”

  Kevin opened the Bible. “Now, to get back to my problem. I got really ticked with that kid—more so than I should have. There’s a verse in this book that tells me I messed up and need to ask forgiveness.” Kevin found the page he wanted and began to read. ‘My dear brothers . . . be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.’ Anger isn’t the answer, Mac. While I was walking, God reminded me of this passage.”

  “Like your conscience.” Mac knew a lot about that. His was constantly on him about what he should or shouldn’t do.

  “That’s part of it.” Kevin closed the book and set it back in his briefcase. “What do you say we pick this up later? We should head back over to Megan’s apartment and see how the crime lab’s doing.”

  “Fine with me.” Mac didn’t much like getting into this religious stuff. He’d had his fill of it as a kid. “Oh, hey, Brandon agreed to take the polygraph. I think we scared him out of his wits.”

  “The kid deserves a lot more than a good scare.”

  “Are you going to arrest him?”

  “We’ll leave that to the locals—unless he turns out to be our killer.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mac and Kevin drove back over to Megan’s apartment to see what kind of progress the CSI technicians were making. Allison Sprague stood in the parking lot next to a blue Ford pickup, stripping off her latex gloves.

  “Look what the cat dragged in.” Allison grinned as the two detectives stepped out of Mac’s car.

  “What do you have for us?” Kevin pulled his notebook from his pocket.

  “Oh, gee, thank you for asking, Kevin. I’m just fine. And how are you gentlemen?”

  “Sorry about that.” Kevin pinched his lips together. “Been a rough couple of days.”

  “I know, I know.” She removed her glasses and placed them on the tailgate. On the pickup bed Mac noticed a bunch of white plastic bins with blue covers. Allison removed her once-white lab coat, rolled it up, and tossed it into an open container.

  “Nice set of wheels.” Mac admired the sturdy four-wheel drive vehicle with the large lug tires. The truck was equipped with a heavy-duty winch, mounted to the front, and four spotlights mounted alongside. There were two more spotlights mounted to the rear of the cargo bed, providing work light for outdoor crime scenes.

  “She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” Allison slid the open tray back into the cargo bed and closed the lid. “I’ve had this rig out in all hours in every weather condition. She takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. I have to keep the trays and bins all locked up or you detective types will rob me blind of all our crime scene supplies. Right, Kev?”

  He chuckled. “I plead the Fifth.”

  “Why don’t you two follow me inside and I’ll show you what we’ve done.”

  Mac followed Allison and Kevin up the stairs. As they entered, Allison pointed to the boxes in the entryway. “I’ll let you boys look through the packed goods. We did a cursory search of the contents, nothing in-depth. Then we screened the entire apartment for possible directional blood spatter and/or cleanup residue with high intensity lights.”

  “Blood splatter?” Mac wrote the phrase down in his notebook.

  “Actually,” Allison replied, “it was directional blood spatter, which is the fancy forensic name for blood spray. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Allison ran a small amount of tap water from the kitchen sink onto her hand and flicked her fingers across an empty packing box. ‘See how the droplets of water have little points off their main body? That tells us the direction the fluid was moving when it struck the surface. The more oblique the image of impact, the greater the angle the fluid struck the solid surface.”

  “What’s the value in that?” Mac asked.

  “The size of the directional blood spatter combined with the angle can tell us where the victim was standing or the velocity of impact. If the blood spatter was large and heavy on a ceiling, for example, that would give me a clue the evidence was transferred via a knife or a blunt instrument that lifted the fluid to the ceiling from the victim. Now if the spatter is in mist form over a large surface, I’d know we had a high velocity transfer from a gunshot. It’s really quite amazing what you can read from directional blood spatter evidence.”

  “Wow, I had no idea.” Mac was embarrassed by his lack of knowledge. As a trooper he’d had some courses in preserving evidence, but he hadn’t worked this closely with the forensics specialists.

  “We found no evidence of obvious blood spatter on the walls in here,” Allison went on, “but we did find a few spots we thought might turn out to be cleanup samples.”

  Mac wanted to ask what those were but didn’t want to look foolish. To his relief, she went on to explain. “Sometimes the bad guys try to clean up their handiwork with detergents or bleach products. They may remove the topical appearance of blood but they actually do us the favor of locking the trace evidence into the paint or dry wall. The high intensity lights gave us a few hopefuls, but none of them panned out.”

  Allison turned on one of the high intensity lights, and Mac squinted his eyes as she illuminated the hallway between the bathroom and the two bedrooms. She pointed to a circular swirl on the wall. “See the rust-colored stain on this obvious cleanup spot?”

  Mac nodded.

  “Now you see it.” Allison turned the light off. “Now you don’t.”

  She placed the high intensity light on a black metal tripod.

  “This stain looked promising, but I’ll show you how we eliminated it.” Allison pulled a cotton swab and a clear bottle of liquid from an open tool kit in the entryway. “This handy little solution is called phenolphthalein. Now I take a swab of the area of the stain.”

  She rubbed the cotton end of the swab over the wall. “Then we add some of the fluid to the swab. If this were blood, the end of the swab would have turned bright pink. The phenolphthalein reacts positively to the iron present in blood, which results in the brilliant color change.” She examined the tip of the cotton swab. “In this case, we are dealing with a regular old stain. Maybe a kid colored on the wall with a marker or something years ago and someone cleaned it off, but it’s not blood.”

  Allison turned off the light in the entryway. The heat from the lamp and the humidity inside the apartment had turned the place into a steam room. Sweat trickled down the small of Mac’s back.

  “Let’s see, what else?” Allison tapped her chin with her index finger. “We photographed the entire residence, of course, along with drafting a working sketch, and pulled all the drain traps from the sinks and shower. Came up with zip.”

  “You may want to see this,” Allison said as she led them into Megan’s bedroom. “Looks like most of her stuff had been packed for the move. We didn’t find much in the room, although these may be of interest.” She pointed to the open bedside drawer.

  Mac and Kevin peered into the drawer at a large opened box of latex condoms.

  “It’s not too earth shattering,” Allison said, “but we did find an open wrapper under the bed. I seized it—maybe we can get prints or something. Too bad we didn’t have the condom; that would be a great DNA sample to take back to the lab. I’ll send the wrapp
er down to the identification bureau in Salem, since I didn’t dust it for latent prints here. Figured it would be too fragile.”

  “Good work, Allison,” Kevin said. “Let us know what you find out.”

  “You got it. I think that’s about it. I’ll write up a supplemental report and get it over to you in the morning.”

  “Perfect. Mac and I are heading back to Troutdale P.D.”

  “Good. You can walk me out. I’ll turn the keys over to you so you can release the apartment.”

  Mac and Kevin helped her pack up her equipment and carry it out to the truck.

  “Is she the smartest person alive or what?” Mac watched Allison get into her pickup.

  “Yes, she is,” Kevin replied without so much as a hint of sarcasm. “If Allison said there was no blood in that apartment or sign of a crime scene, you can bet your last dollar there’s nothing to be found. She’s the best.”

  “You said you wanted to go back over to the P.D.?”

  “Yeah.” Kevin glanced at his watch. “But it’s late. How about we head back to the office so I can get my car? We’ll call in our report and head home. Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”

  He tipped back his head and yawned.

  On the drive into Portland, Kevin talked with Eric, giving him the latest updates on the investigation and getting reports that had come in from other team members.

  When he hung up, Kevin filled Mac in on the call. The canvass that had been done around Megan’s neighborhood by a couple of uniforms from the Troutdale P.D. hadn’t turned up much.

  Apparently, Megan hadn’t struck up friendships with any of the neighbors, and as luck would have it, the apartment next-door and the one below the victim’s were currently vacant. If there had been some type of struggle at the apartment, it was unlikely anyone would have been around to hear it. The detectives working the pawnshop details and the narcotics informants hadn’t turned up any new leads. Eric wanted all the detectives back at Troutdale P.D. at 6:00 A.M. for the next day’s assignments, but they were all to keep their pagers on in case something came up.

  By the time the detectives caught up on their notes and left the Portland office, it was after nine o’clock. “We did good today, partner.” Kevin slapped Mac on the back as they exited the building and headed for their cars. Mac agreed.

  Kevin climbed into his car. “Good night, and good luck with that girlfriend of yours. You put on your best smile for her, you hear me? And maybe bring her some flowers.”

  “I hear you.” Mac turned on his headlights. Once out of the parking lot, he headed west toward I-205.

  While Kevin looked forward to going home, Mac didn’t. He’d be walking into an empty apartment, with a near-empty refrigerator and no sweet woman to cuddle up to. No one to kiss him good night. It was too late to call Linda. He doubted she’d want to talk to him anyway.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mac eased the car into his driveway. The light he usually left on in the living room gave the false impression that someone was there, waiting. He loosened his tie as he walked up the exposed aggregate path to the front door. Lucy, his golden retriever, peered at him through the front window then jumped down, most likely to take her usual place by the door. Mac could barely squeeze inside as the dog barked and whimpered her greeting. “Hey girl, did you miss me?” Mac rubbed the dog’s head, received a series of doggie kisses, then opened the closet door and hung his jacket inside.

  “Mac?”

  Mac stopped cold. The feminine voice had come from his living room. Was his imagination working overtime? Linda stepped into the hallway. “It’s about time you showed up. I’ve been waiting for hours.” She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  He held her close, hesitant at first. Linda looked rumpled and sleepy. She wore a soft powder blue sweater and jeans and smelled like gardenias. She felt perfect in his arms. “What are you doing here?” He kissed the top of her head.

  “Waiting for you.”

  He leaned back. “Were we supposed to do something tonight? Did I forget to call you again?”

  “No. I felt bad about what I said to you earlier. I wasn’t being fair.” She moved away and took his hand, pulling him into the living room. “You look tired. Want something to eat?”

  “Is there something?”

  “I made spaghetti and meat sauce. It won’t take me long to heat it up.”

  “That’s nice.” Mac grinned. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Me too.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed him, reminding him why he’d asked her to marry him. Moving away again she said, “Why don’t you sit down and relax? I’ll get your dinner.”

  “Do I have time to take a shower? I feel grungy.”

  “Sure.” She kissed his cheek and padded barefoot into the kitchen. He watched her graceful moves, wishing they were already married. Wishing they could forget about food and head straight to bed.

  In the bedroom, Mac removed his brown leather shoulder holster and set it on his bedside table. He tossed his badge and pager next to it, yawning as he slipped out of his shoes and peeled off his sweaty socks. Seconds later he stood under a steaming shower, relishing the water laced with soap as it cleaned away the day’s grime.

  The tantalizing scent of dinner prodded him to dry off and get dressed in record time.

  He put on cargo shorts and an Oregon State T-shirt, ran a comb through his short dark hair, and headed down the hall.

  Linda had set up a tray in the living room and turned on the gas fireplace. He thought it was a little too warm for a fire but wasn’t about to break the mood.

  While he ate, she sat next to him, feet curled up under her in a delectable pose. He enjoyed his main course but was anxious to finish the meal and sample dessert—kisses from the woman seated beside him. Linda was acting every bit as wonderful as she’d been when they first met. After he’d eaten, they snuggled together for what seemed to Mac a terribly short time before Linda announced that she needed to leave.

  “It’s too late for you to go home.” He nuzzled the back of her neck as she leaned forward. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

  “Mac, you know I can’t do that. It isn’t right.”

  He leaned back, stretching his arms toward the ceiling. “No, I suppose not.” Mac wasn’t the kind of guy who slept around. In fact, with school and work he hadn’t had a lot of time to pursue a serious relationship—until Linda. His luck he’d fallen for a virgin who intended to stay that way until she was married.

  She kissed his cheek. “Besides, we’ll see each other tomorrow, right?”

  Mac frowned. “Tomorrow?”

  “You promised to come to church with me, remember?”

  Mac groaned. “I have to work. The case is really heating up.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “I know, and I would like to go with you.” That wasn’t quite true, but Mac wasn’t about to antagonize her again. “I can’t very well tell my sergeant to put the murder investigation on hold. It’s not like I’m delivering newspapers, honey. This is serious stuff.”

  “And they really need you? Don’t they have someone else?”

  “No. My partner is counting on me to be there.” Mac wrapped a stand of her silken hair around his forefinger. “Maybe I can make it next Sunday.”

  “PLEASE TRY.” Linda pinched her lips together, afraid she’d reveal too much. She was disappointed but didn’t want to tear apart the fence she’d worked so hard to mend. Mac was a cop. She’d known that when she met him. As much as she hated his being gone so much, she decided today that she loved him and needed to be more understanding about his job. She had been selfish in her demands. Linda still felt he should have called but wouldn’t push it. She didn’t want to lose Mac. Men like him didn’t come along very often. She debated whether to tell him about the appointment she’d made with the pastor to set up premarital counseling.

  Though Mac didn’t come right out and say so, Linda doubte
d he shared her faith. She wanted him to and thought maybe if he would spend a few sessions with her pastor, he’d come around. At least she hoped that was the case. She wouldn’t tell him about the appointment she’d made—at least not tonight. She wanted to leave on a positive note.

  Linda reluctantly stood up and turned around, clasping both of Mac’s hands in hers, pulling him up. “I love you.”

  Mac drew her back into his arms and kissed her long and hard.

  She took his passion as a sign that he loved her as well. He’d never actually said he did. But why else would he propose?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sunday, August 25

  5:50 A.M.

  Mac ascended the stairs to the briefing room at Troutdale Police Department. Philly and Russ were already seated in the back row of the small room, which was now equipped with three rows of tables and chairs.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Philly waved at Mac with one hand and stuffed half a maple bar into his mouth with the other. “We didn’t ruin your beauty sleep, I hope,” he added with a muffled laugh through the mouthful of pastry.

  “Morning, guys. Yeah, I’m a little tired. Late night.”

  Kevin and Eric came into the room moments later, cups of coffee in hand.

  “Morning, Mac.” Eric settled into a chair toward the front of the room. “We have some coffee and doughnuts in the break room.”

  “Sounds good.” Mac started for the break room.

  “Hey, Mac, bring me back one of those apple fritters, would you?” Philly asked.

  “You got it.”

  “I like that kid more every minute,” Philly chuckled.

  Shortly after six o’clock, Eric had the weary group of detectives assembled in the briefing room. “Let’s recap yesterday’s events for the group. Kevin, why don’t you start with your interviews?”

  Kevin stood up and walked to the front of the room, taking a sip of his coffee. “Mac and I met with the victim’s younger sister, Cindy Tyson, over at their shared residence. We found her credible,” he said to the group. Mac nodded in agreement. “She verified that Megan had gone missing on August fourteenth. Cindy reported that the last time she’d heard from Megan was on the thirteenth when they’d spoken on the phone—apparently the victim was going shopping. The sister, Cindy, spent the night with a girlfriend and came home on the fourteenth to find their apartment had been burglarized. There was no sign of forced entry to the apartment and the crime lab could find no evidence of a crime scene.”