Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  It took effort to control her anger as the first photo loaded on the small screen. Christina, naked and spread-eagled on her princess bed, lay there with her eyes closed and her head in an unnatural position. When that photo was taken, she’d been unconscious. Seeing that beautiful girl violated like that made her blood boil, as if witnessing a crime with her hands tied behind her back.

  “I’ll need to hold on to this,” Tess said, gesturing with the iPhone and avoiding the inquisitive glance Michowsky threw her way.

  “In our house… can you believe it?” Bartlett raised his voice to the point of shouting. “I couldn’t believe it either, so I accused her of being a part of it.” He ran his hand over his face angrily, as if to cleanse himself of what he’d done. “She swore to me she didn’t participate in it, but I didn’t believe her. Not at first.”

  “You never believed her,” Dr. Bartlett said.

  “She’s a model,” Bartlett replied, trying to justify himself. “I thought—”

  “She’s a model, not a whore!” Dr. Bartlett snapped. “A hardworking, honest girl. You never saw the difference.”

  Bartlett’s head hung low; he sat back on the sofa, leaving some distance between him and his wife.

  “She had no idea when the photos were taken, or how,” he added, after a moment of dense silence. “I grilled her last night, asked the same questions over and over again, until I decided that maybe she was telling the truth. Now I know she was, but it’s too late.”

  “What did she do when you were questioning her?” Tess asked, frowning a little. “What did she say?”

  “She was unusually calm and silent,” Dr. Bartlett replied, before her husband had the chance. “She was pale, white as a sheet of paper. She didn’t cry; she just sat there, giving us the same answer to all our questions. She had no idea who did that, when, or why.”

  “In our house,” Bartlett said again, “where my family is supposed to be safe!” He stood and staggered to the back entrance, double French doors that opened onto the back patio leading to the boat ramp. “I have video surveillance everywhere, and an alarm system. How could this happen?”

  Tess made a note to check the boat and the backyard. The Bartlett residence was a canal property; the waterway could’ve been the point of ingress; she’d seen it before. A quiet boat in the middle of the night, a small canoe maybe, could put the perpetrator in someone’s backyard bypassing street cameras, neighbors, witnesses, and traffic cops. Completely stealth. Then, what? With the house locked down and the alarm set up, how could he have gained access to Christina? Why didn’t anyone see or hear anything?

  “We need to bring back the Crime Scene Unit,” Tess said to Michowsky. “Check points of entry, her window, backyard, waterway. Get trace to swipe that bedroom inside and out.”

  Michowsky nodded and pulled out his phone. “I’ll get them to look at the alarm code history and download the video surveillance data into our systems.”

  “Where was her boyfriend last night?” Fradella asked.

  “Traveling for business. He’s in New York for a land sale, returning today,” Dr. Bartlett replied. “He’s not… behind this in any way.”

  “You never know, Iris, stop vouching for people,” Bartlett said, without turning away from the French doors. “Who else could’ve gotten so close to her, here, in this house?”

  “Does he normally spend the night?” Tess asked.

  “No, never,” Dr. Bartlett replied. “Christina didn’t want that. She sometimes spent the night at his place, but here... she never had him sleep here.”

  “Are you always home at night?” Tess asked, looking first at Dr. Bartlett, then at her husband, who walked toward the sofa with an unsteady gait. The man seemed almost ready to collapse.

  “Yes,” they both replied, almost at the same time.

  “We spent a week in the Caribbean last fall,” Bartlett said. “Since we came back, we’ve been home every night.”

  Tess looked at the photo once again. The frame caught a piece of the window, covered with blue curtains. Not a shred of daylight seemed to come from that window, but she had to enhance the photo to be sure.

  Then she shifted screens to the text app. Who sent the troublesome link? It had come from a five-digit numeric sender, not a person saved in her contacts list. The sender had used one of the many online messenger systems available on the internet. Probably untraceable.

  “Did she tell you who sent her the link?”

  “She didn’t recognize the number,” Bartlett replied. “I was going to have someone look into it today.”

  “Someone?” Tess retorted, sounding angrier than she’d wanted. “When exactly were you going to report this crime?”

  Bartlett clasped his hands together. “This morning, but we woke up, and she—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Instead, he lowered his head again and stared at the floor for a long moment.

  Tess wanted to challenge that statement, knowing very well that they were probably going to try to manage the situation quietly, afraid of the ensuing media exposure. She decided to keep that thought to herself, but her loaded gaze expressed it clearly. Silence engulfed the room, heavy and dense.

  “You’re right, Agent Winnett,” Bartlett eventually said. “We wanted to keep this under wraps, because of the media. We were afraid those vultures would have a field day dragging our girl’s name through the mud. I thought I’d be able to clean this up, to find who did this, and—”

  “Sidney,” his wife intervened and stopped him before saying what he was about to say.

  The phrase continued in Tess’s mind. No doubt, once Sidney Bartlett learned the identity of his daughter’s assailant, he’d have found ways to deal with him, also under wraps.

  That instant, she remembered where she knew Sidney Bartlett from.

  Privileged Territory

  “What the hell, Winnett? This isn’t your case,” Michowsky protested, the moment the Bartlett residence front door closed behind the three of them.

  Tess didn’t reply immediately. She focused on studying the house from the unsub’s perspective. How did he enter the premises undetected? Cameras with motion-activated sensors covered the porch from both sides and would’ve flooded the lawn in bright light the moment he set foot on the property line. Probably the same security system covered the backyard and the dock. Now that she remembered who Sidney Bartlett was, she had no doubt in her mind the house was a fortress.

  “Winnett!” Michowsky called, probably irritated with her silence.

  Her first thought was to say that she’d felt obligated to step in, seeing how all he could think of was getting the hell out of there, but she decided to keep that thought to herself. Michowsky was a good cop; he’d proven himself time and again, even if he was sometimes prone to jumping to conclusions, to seeking the easiest way out of a case. That probably came with age, with experience, with the accumulation of years of service and countless perps locked up, making it easy for him to assume he had everything figured out already.

  “Just think of me as a free upgrade, Gary, the type you get at car rentals after you put in some mileage,” she answered, still studying the layout of the security cameras. “It’s your case, one hundred percent, I promise.”

  “It sure as hell don’t feel like it, Winnett. What was on that phone, and why didn’t you share it with us in there?”

  She handed him Christina’s phone, sealed in a transparent evidence bag. “Take a look. You’ll understand why I didn’t share this with two men in the presence of the victim’s parents.”

  Michowsky frowned, then muttered a long, detailed oath as he thumbed through the photos. He handed the phone to Fradella, who glanced at the images and then returned the phone to Tess without another word.

  “That’s one hell of a nonviolent crime,” Michowsky said.

  “You think it’s nonviolent?” Tess snapped. “Just because there’s no blood on the walls? Think again, Gary. The unsub killed her, as clearly and
as directly as if he’d shoved those pills down her throat with his own hands.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Michowsky said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. At first glance, it looked more like a party prank gone wrong,” he added. “You’ve seen those on the internet, right? Where the guy wakes up naked and taped to a tree?”

  “I’ve seen them,” Fradella answered. “I know a guy who woke up with a butterfly tattoo on his ass and a huge hangover. The photo of his embellished rear end was everywhere for a while, but then the buzz died down. He wasn’t too heartbroken about it; he just chose a different crowd to party with.”

  Then, as if he had just thought of something, Fradella took out his phone and started typing in a browser search window.

  Tess reminded them, “It’s different for a woman, guys. It’s demeaning to a level that can completely ruin one’s life. Not to mention it’s a crime.”

  “We’re not debating that,” Michowsky replied. “We all agree a crime has been committed here. I’m just saying it could’ve started differently, although she seems really out of it in those photos. Screen’s too small to tell though.”

  “This is worse than we thought,” Fradella said. “Whoever released the photos tagged Christina by name and pushed them out through press release channels, making sure they’d flood the net quickly. This wasn’t a prank; this was vengeful and targeted.”

  A moment of silence ensued. The implications of Fradella’s statement changed the way Christina’s death had to be treated from an investigative perspective, whether a suicide or not.

  “There’s something else you need to know, guys,” Tess said in a low voice, grabbing both their arms and pulling them closer to her. Still on the front porch, she didn’t want to be overheard from inside the house.

  Fradella shot her an inquisitive look. “Bartlett?”

  “Yes. He and I met years ago, when he was a defense attorney in a high-profile case, and I testified for the prosecution.”

  “I wonder how that one went,” Michowsky chortled.

  “The case was a RICO prosecution against a Colombian national,” Tess added. “Our friend Mr. Bartlett seems to have a penchant for attracting RICO clients, all of South American descent, mostly Colombian. He’s since defended quite a few and many of them have walked free. He must be advertising to that market,” she added.

  Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on the two cops. “You think he’s connected?” Michowsky asked.

  “Depending on whom you ask, you might hear he’s the lead enforcer for a major Colombian drug cartel in his spare time,” Tess added, further lowering his voice. “That changes a few things.”

  “That was never proven, Agent Winnett,” Bartlett said calmly behind them, his voice strong, unfaltering.

  Tess turned swiftly, startled and irritated that she’d let someone sneak up on them.

  “I’m aware it was never proven, Mr. Bartlett, otherwise this conversation wouldn’t be taking place on your front porch.” She held his gaze firmly, unapologetically. “Do you understand we need to have all the facts if we’re to catch whoever hurt your daughter?”

  He lowered his gaze after a long moment. “Do what you need to do, Agent Winnett. Ask what you’re going to ask.”

  “Okay,” Tess replied, keeping her voice low. “Let’s consider this porch privileged territory. Will you trust me on that?”

  Michowsky stared at her with raised eyebrows, then looked at Bartlett, who hesitated for a second before saying, “Years ago, when I had you on the stand in cross-examination, you chose to be truthful and forthcoming, even if it wasn’t in the prosecution’s best interest. Have you changed much since then, Agent Winnett?”

  “Not a single bit.”

  “Still, why should I trust you?”

  “You lost your daughter today, Mr. Bartlett, and that’s reason enough for me to grant you this privilege. You deserve a break, and we need to be able to do our jobs.”

  He nodded a few of times. “So be it, Agent Winnett. Ask away.”

  “Do you know of anyone who could’ve done this to your daughter to get back at you? Rival cartels, any scumbag you couldn’t get to walk?”

  “I thought of that, Agent Winnett. I have several names that come to mind, but these men kill to settle scores. They blow up cars and shoot people’s kneecaps.”

  “Maybe someone wanted you discredited, not eliminated? A rival attorney who wants your clientele?”

  “There’s one aggressive newcomer; he used to practice in Chicago. He’s out to build a reputation for himself with the cartels. I’ll give you his name, but I need you to promise me something.”

  “Shoot,” she said, frowning a little.

  “I’m thinking these people don’t know what happened. Maybe not all of them have seen my baby girl like that. Could you please keep it to yourself?” He looked at Michowsky, then at Fradella. “Please, don’t let this be the way the world remembers Christina.”

  “I—we promise, Mr. Bartlett,” Tess replied firmly. “We will be investigating your daughter’s death as a homicide. You have my word.”

  She turned to leave, but Bartlett grabbed her arm, then promptly let it go the moment Tess glared at him.

  “Agent Winnett, we’re still in privileged territory, right?”

  She nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “When you find out who did this to my little girl, could you please let me know?” he asked quietly, his words barely above a whisper. “Just tell me who did this and leave the rest to… God.”

  The Boyfriend

  They waited until the Crime Scene Unit returned to the Bartlett residence, and Tess smiled politely as several of them glared in her direction, pretending not to understand the source of their frustration. She instructed them to look for any sign of forced entry, to dust all windowsills for prints and pore over the backyard with a magnifying glass. One of the techs, a young man whose early alopecia cutting into a dark, unruly mane of stiff, curly hair made him look like a cartoon character, showed some real interest.

  “You’re saying someone broke into this house?” the tech asked, pointing at the surveillance camera above their heads.

  Tess nodded. “While people were at home, and no one suspected anything.”

  The tech whistled. “Well, if he left a trace anywhere, we’ll find it.”

  She smiled. She liked seeing that kind of enthusiasm, of professional commitment and curiosity in an investigator. She didn’t have much hope for any findings though. Someone so bold, so organized, wouldn’t make forensic mistakes.

  She gazed quickly in Michowsky’s direction. He and Fradella were talking to Bartlett, their heads close together, their voices low. She waited by Michowsky’s vehicle, unable to hear a word of what they were saying. Soon enough, the two men shook Bartlett’s hand and walked toward the unmarked Ford Explorer.

  “What was that about?” Tess asked, as soon as the vehicle set off.

  “We asked him if Christina’s reaction to the text she received had seemed normal to him,” Fradella said.

  Tess frowned. It was an interesting thought. Bartlett had described his daughter’s demeanor as unusually calm, composed, tearless, and determined. Not really the typical female response to a psychological shock of that magnitude.

  “And?”

  “I would’ve expected him to say she cried, screamed, fainted, or, you know, threw a fit,” Fradella said, “which would’ve been totally understandable.”

  “In retrospect,” Michowsky concluded, while taking the interstate ramp, “Bartlett confirms. Her reaction wasn’t normal, but I’m guessing he was too shocked himself to realize it last night.”

  “You’re saying she knew about it?” Tess asked.

  “I think it’s a possibility,” Fradella replied.

  “If she knew, she might’ve told someone,” Tess said, “although it’s not something she’d want people to know. Maybe people close to her had noticed something was off. When was her boyfriend due back?” />
  Fradella checked his notes. “They said today, about noon. He should be home by now. He’s in West Palm Beach, by CityPlace.”

  “Gary, will you—”

  “Sure,” Michowsky interrupted, then took the first exit.

  “Don’t you want to study the photos first?” Fradella asked. He rode in the back seat and he’d leaned forward between the two front seats, popping his head between the two of them. “We should be able to find out when they were taken.”

  “I’d rather see his reaction when he finds out about Christina’s death,” Tess replied. “That window of opportunity is quickly disappearing. With the photos pushed to the media, it’s only a matter of minutes, hours at best, before she makes the news.”

  “Couldn’t we get a gag order or something?” Fradella asked, and by the undertones in his voice, Tess sensed how he felt about the entire situation, despite knowing there was little they could do. Bartlett’s request to protect the memory of his daughter had resonated with all of them.

  “It’s a long shot, but we could ask the ADA to look into it,” Tess replied. “You can’t gag the media about a celebrity’s death. You can’t gag them, period; it’s an infringement on First Amendment rights. The only exceptions, rarely granted, are in matters of national security, and this doesn’t qualify.”

  “But they’d be helping the perp in propagating his crime, wouldn’t they?”

  “The media won’t release the photos, per se, but there’s nothing we could do to keep reporters from mentioning them and from speculating about their impact on the victim, or the correlation with her suicide. The people will do the rest, searching for the photos online. It’s the world we live in, Todd, but I’ll try. No harm in doing that, is there?”

  She grabbed the laptop and typed a quick email to the ADA. Her thin fingers hesitated above the keyboard when she realized she didn’t have a case number. She wasn’t acting in any official capacity, and she needed to fix that quickly before it could become an issue.