by Blake Pierce
But she couldn’t get smug about it. Now she had a new case to solve. And whether or not it was officially her case, she had to solve it before anyone else was killed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Riley pulled up to Jared’s apartment building, of course he was already standing on the sidewalk waiting for her. He climbed into the car and gave her directions for heading out of town and toward Monarch.
As she drove, Riley said firmly, “Now I want you to tell me how you found out about this murder.”
Jared chuckled and replied, “Have you ever heard of a website called CrimeWidth?”
Riley tried to remember. She thought she’d heard someone mention that name—Bill, maybe.
Jared continued, “It’s a violent crime alert streaming service, and it connects to police scanners all over the country. It’s got an alert feeds page that keeps up with violent crimes in real time. They never miss a thing. That’s where I heard about this new murder in Monarch.”
She said, “So you just happened to be listening in when this new murder came up?”
Jared shrugged and said, “I listen to it when I can’t sleep. And I sure as hell had trouble sleeping last night. It was a good thing I tuned in, huh?”
Riley’s mind boggled at the idea of a public website that gathered so much real-time information about violent crime. She wondered whether it was a good idea for civilians to have access to such a tool.
Still, she had to admit it had been helpful this morning.
And Jared had been helpful as well.
*
It was only a short drive eastward from Atlanta to Monarch. As they entered the little town, Riley could practically smell the affluence in the air. Everything was posh and well-manicured, and the main street was lined with extremely high-end shops. It was all so sparkling and tidy that it hardly looked real to Riley. The storybook feel of the place was heightened when she noticed that some people here were riding around in golf carts instead of cars.
They continued along curving roads past entries to a couple of country clubs with enormous golf courses. In fact, it seemed to Riley as though the entire visible landscape was made up little except golf courses.
Then they made their way through a wealthy neighborhood of large homes until they reached the end of a cul-de-sac. There they found the modern stone mansion where Edwin Gray Harter had lived. Although the style was different, the sheer size of it reminded Riley of the homes of the other two victims. Like the others, this carefully maintained property wasn’t gated and could be accessed from the street.
Definitely a pattern here, Riley thought as she tried to visualize how an intruder might have gotten in.
Right now, police cars and a medical examiner’s van were parked outside the front entrance. When Riley parked and she and Jared got out of the car, she saw couple of uniformed men standing in the open doorway. One was smoking a cigarette as he stepped forward to meet them.
He said to Jared, “You must be the guy I talked to on the phone.” Then he added to Riley, “And you must be the FBI woman he told me about. I’m Callum O’Neill, and I’ve got the bad luck to be the chief of police here in Monarch.”
Riley immediately noticed that he had a really thick New York accent. He was a short, swarthy, black-haired man, almost comically compact and sturdy.
Sort of like a miniature football lineman, Riley thought.
After Riley introduced herself, O’Neill said, “You know, back in New York, I had to deal with lots of murders—drive-bys, gangbanger wars, mob hits, armed robberies gone bad, spouses killing each other, I can’t tell you how much of that kind of stuff. I took this job here in Monarch to get away from all that.”
With a growl of dismay, he added, “Fat chance of that, I guess.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, tossed it on the ground, and put it out with his foot.
He said, “So this is now officially an FBI case, huh? I guess it’s about time. Maybe if you’d gotten started earlier, the guy in there would still be alive. Small wonder folks in these parts don’t much like Feds.”
Riley winced a little. She decided maybe this wasn’t the best moment to tell him this wasn’t yet an FBI case—that in fact, he was going to have to call Quantico himself to make it official.
She simply said, “Show us the crime scene.”
O’Neill led them into the house. Riley was increasingly struck by the general resemblance to the other victims’ homes. This one, too, looked like some kind of gigantic showroom where no one had ever lived.
She noticed especially a common taste for immaculate white sofas. She wondered why anybody would want furniture that would show any wear or soil so easily. In her own home a thing like that wouldn’t hold up for a whole day—not with two daughters and now a dog.
As Riley looked around, she imagined how much trouble the housekeeping staff must go to in order to keep everything so polished and pristine. She figured they must spend endless hours cleaning away any signs of human life.
They approached a dramatic staircase that wound up one side of the entry hall to an overhanging balcony. Riley could see that the stairs continued up even farther into the upper reaches of the house. Before Riley could start up the steps, O’Neill said …
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I made that mistake myself when I first got here. Turns out nobody ever uses those stairs. I wish somebody had told me. I’m going wake up stiff and sore tomorrow morning.”
He led Riley and Jared to the elevator, which they took to the third floor. When they stepped outside the elevator into a hallway, Riley saw that they were surrounded by paintings. Although she didn’t know a lot about art, some of these were unmistakable. A couple of Picassos especially caught her eye.
Her mind boggled at how much must have been spent acquiring this collection.
Jared said, “Looks like Edwin Gray Harter was quite the art lover.”
Although Riley didn’t say so, she guessed differently. She sensed that this whole outrageously expensive collection was all about ostentatious wealth, not a love of art.
She shivered a little as she was hit with a strong gut feeling …
Love of anything is in short supply in this house.
Even all these expensive material possessions seemed somehow starved for affection.
Riley looked up and down the hallway.
“What kind of security is there up here?” she asked.
“None,” O’Neill said. “I know, that sounds kind of perverse. But people on the staff tell me that this whole floor was Harter’s private domain—and I do mean private. No security cameras or surveillance of any kind.”
Of course Riley realized that the lack of any security footage was going to be a problem. But it also made the art collection seem even weirder to her. Harter had spent vast amounts of money collecting paintings he may not have even especially liked, but that no one except him was ever allowed to see.
She thought that Harter must have been a strange and empty man—probably both arrogant and pathetic.
O’Neill led Riley and Jared through a vast bedroom into an almost equally vast, white-tiled bathroom. Uniformed people were milling about, most of them hovering near an enormous hot tub.
The first things that caught Riley’s eye were a tray and some broken china lying on the floor. Then she looked into the tub and saw the man’s body there beneath the water. The water had turned pink with blood. At the bottom of the tub next to the body lay a large kitchen knife—obviously the murder weapon, again abandoned by the killer.
A rotund but remarkably nimble-looking white-clad woman came toward Riley. O’Neill introduced her as Sage Ennis, the county medical examiner.
“So, can we let out the water now?” Ennis asked in a sharp Southern twang. “We were told to leave everything like we found it until you got here, but this guy’s already getting kind of ripe. I’d like him not to get too nasty before I have to do the autopsy.”
Riley could defin
itely smell a disagreeable odor. She knew it was going to quickly get worse.
She took a long look at everything.
“You’ve got photos?” she asked.
“Of course we do, honey,” the ME drawled. “I’ll send them right over to you.”
“OK,” Riley said.
A member of the examiner’s team opened the drain on the side of the tub, and the water started to run out.
Riley asked Ennis, “What facts have you been able determine so far?”
Ennis crossed her arms and said, “You’re the FBI gal. What all can you tell me?”
Riley didn’t like her tone of voice, but the attitude wasn’t new to her. As O’Neill had just suggested, Federal officials of any kind weren’t always especially welcome in this part of the country.
She’s testing me, Riley realized.
Riley reached into the tub to feel the draining water.
“Still very warm,” she said to the ME. “The murderer must have left the jets and heat running. My guess is they were still on when your people showed up and turned them off.”
Ennis nodded.
Riley looked again at the tray and the broken china. She guessed that a servant had come into Harter’s bedroom early this morning with coffee and a small breakfast. He or she hadn’t found Harter in bed, but had heard the hot tub jets through the bathroom door. The servant had guessed that Harter was enjoying an early morning soak, then came in here and dropped the tray in horror when he saw the body.
Riley quickly reviewed what she already knew about the time sequence.
When Jared had called her, he’d said the body had been found no more than an hour before then. Riley had spent another hour picking up Jared and driving out here.
She looked at her watch and said, “One of Harter’s servants found the body at about 6:30 a.m.—a male servant, since he felt free to come into the bathroom. That was Harter’s regular time for breakfast.”
Ennis tilted her head with interest.
Riley peered again into the tub. The water was draining away from the corpse now, and she could see it more clearly.
She said, “His body sank and stayed at the bottom of the tub. That means his lungs were full of water—he drowned while he was struggling with his assailant. Not that he wouldn’t have died of his wounds pretty quickly. But if that had happened, there’d have been even more blood in the water.”
Riley sniffed the sour air again and looked more closely at the corpse, which showed signs of bloating.
She wasn’t trained in forensic medicine, but she’d seen and smelled more than her share of corpses in many different conditions—including quite a few that had been submerged under water of varying temperatures.
She reminded herself …
The jets and the heat were running until the cops and ME team got here.
The heat had somewhat accelerated the bloating and putrefaction processes. So the smell and the bloating gave Riley a pretty good idea of when the murder had happened.
She looked up at Ennis and said, “I’d put the time of his death at eleven thirty last night. What’s your estimate?”
Ennis smiled, looking rather impressed.
“That’s pretty much what I figured too,” she said.
Riley stood looking silently at the body for a moment, trying to get a better sense of what had happened. She couldn’t quite get a feeling for the killer’s actual thoughts right now. But it was easy to see that Harter had been killed in much the same way as Julian Morse.
Harter had probably settled down in the tub facing away from the bathroom door. She spotted a pair of glasses and a hearing aid on a nearby counter. Over the rumble of the jets, he hadn’t heard his assailant come inside. The killer had attacked him from behind, just as he had done with Julian Morse.
Riley could only be sure of one thing. There could no longer be the slightest doubt that the three murders were the work of the same criminal.
Riley looked at Ennis and said, “Your team can take the body away now.”
Ennis began to give her people orders to remove the corpse.
Riley looked all around the bathroom and saw that Chief O’Neill’s team was doing a careful and efficient job of examining the crime scene. O’Neill had obviously learned his forensic techniques well in New York. She felt sorry that his expertise was still proving to be so useful.
O’Neill stepped toward her and said, “What do we do now?”
Riley paused for a moment, then thought …
The wives.
She remembered again Morgan Farrell’s persecuted look, and how similar Charlotte’s expression had been in the portrait.
Although she didn’t yet know why, Riley felt sure …
It means something.
Riley looked O’Neill in the eye and said, “Was Harter married?”
“Yeah,” O’Neill said.
“Is she in the house?”
O’Neill nodded.
“I want to talk to her right now,” Riley said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Riley started to follow Chief O’Neill out of the bathroom, she noticed that Jared was leaning against a wall, looking pale. His mouth was hanging open.
He obviously had never seen a corpse in this condition before. At least the bloating and putrefaction must be new to him, and this might be the first time he’d encountered the smell.
Well, Riley knew that it could get a lot worse than this. She felt in no mood to coddle the young cop.
“Are you coming with us, or what?” she asked him.
Jared snapped out of his shock and followed Riley and O’Neill.
The three of them got into the elevator and went down to the second floor. O’Neill led them into a large recreation room with a pool table, a ping-pong table, and some other games.
A young blonde woman was sitting on a couch staring at a video screen.
To Riley’s surprise, she was playing a video game, gunning down virtual villains. She seemed to notice the arrival of Riley, O’Neill, and Jared, but barely took her eyes off the screen.
“Look at this,” she remarked with a note of satisfaction. “I’m getting pretty good with my left hand after all.”
Riley saw that the woman was holding the remote in her left hand, and her right hand was tightly bandaged.
Right away Riley had a good idea of what had probably happened to that hand.
O’Neill spoke to her over the crackle of virtual weapons. “Mrs. Harter, we’re sorry to trouble you in your …”
His voice faded. Riley was pretty sure he was going to say “your time of grief.” But given how the woman was acting right now, that hardly seemed fitting.
Instead, O’Neill said, “An FBI agent is here to see you—Riley Paige.”
The woman looked rather bored. She killed off a couple more of the game’s attackers, then paused the program. Riley, Jared, and O’Neill sat down in chairs facing her.
Riley could see that, like the wives of the other victims, this woman was remarkably good-looking. Unlike the first two, she was comfortably dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Most noticeably, she was extremely young.
There was something else about her appearance that unsettled Riley. She couldn’t yet put her finger on it.
Riley said, “I haven’t been told your name.”
The woman crossed her arms and leaned back on a cushion.
She said, “Tisha Harter, formerly Brown.”
Then with a grin she added, “Or née Brown, to put it properly. I always think it’s kind of a funny word, née. Like the sound a horse makes. Of course, I know it’s French for ‘born.’ I know some French, learned it on my own, no help from anybody. Also some Italian and Spanish.”
Her grin widened as she said, “¿Atraparon ustedes al asesino?”
Riley’s own Spanish was fairly good, partly due to having Gabriela in the house. She knew that Tisha Harter was asking if they’d caught the killer.
“Todavía no,” Riley said. Not yet
.
Tisha shrugged and said, “Well, it’s like I keep telling everybody—I didn’t do it.”
She sat there looking from one face to the other, as if she couldn’t imagine what else there might be to say about the matter.
Riley pointed to her bandaged hand and said, “Do you mind telling me how that happened?”
With a defensive look, Tisha tried to tuck her hand under her other arm.
“Yeah, I kind of do mind,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”
Riley said nothing, just waited for Tisha to say something more.
Tisha said, “I’m clumsy. I tripped and fell.”
Riley glanced over the young woman’s taut, athletic body.
“You’re not clumsy,” Riley said.
Tisha’s eyes narrowed, showing a flash of anger.
“What are you accusing me of?” she asked.
“Who said I’m accusing you of anything?” Riley said.
The woman locked eyes with Riley, as if to test which of them would blink first.
I can play that game, Riley thought, returning her gaze steadily.
The truth was, Riley didn’t need to be told what had happened to Tisha Harter’s hand.
Judging from the way it was bandaged, her pinky finger was broken. And Riley had no doubt that her late husband had inflicted this injury. What intrigued Riley at the moment was Tisha’s defensiveness about it. Riley was used to abused women who, for one reason or another, tried to cover or apologize for their husbands’ cruelty. But something different was going on here.
Tisha Harter didn’t want to admit that someone else had hurt her, either physically or emotionally. She wanted the world to think that she was much too tough for that.
And Riley sensed that her toughness was very, very real.
Again, Riley had a strange, uncomfortable feeling about this young widow, as if she were somehow familiar, someone she’d met before.
Riley continued to hold the woman’s determined gaze, and for a long moment neither of them flinched.
Finally Tisha averted her eyes, looking a bit ashamed at being the first to break eye contact.
