The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6)

by Mike Markel

  “You sure? We have his address. No trouble to pick him up.”

  “How can I help you, Detective?”

  “We could charge him with assault with shitty aim.”

  A small smile crept onto his face. “Ah.”

  “What did you tell him, aim for your chest?”

  “That took you a while.”

  “Is that what Jesus would’ve done?”

  “The university, which I support as a taxpayer, withdrew its support for Students for Decency and Morality because we’re a Christian organization. We followed proper procedures in applying for a permit to hold that rally.”

  “In that application, did you say that one of your stooges was gonna throw a bottle at you?”

  “Let me ask you a question, Detective. I realize we’re going a little off the topic of law enforcement, since we’ve already agreed that I’m not going to press charges against Justin. But tell me this: Was Jesus shy about spreading his message?”

  “Well,” I said. “You’ve certainly given me something to think about. But let’s get back to law enforcement, like you said. How did you learn about the porn video, the one with the student in it? Did you just stumble across it, late one evening, during alone time?”

  He smiled. “It’s all over campus. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “I mean, how did you get the address for it?”

  “Maybe somebody wrote it down for me.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  He shook his head, sad that he couldn’t help me. “Sorry.”

  “The fire marshal’s going over the bottle fragments right now. If your prints are on it, that’s manslaughter.”

  “What bottle?”

  I just looked at him.

  “Was there a bottle found at the arson site?”

  I held my gaze. “The dead girl—you know she had nothing to do with Abby Demarest or Virginia Rinaldi, right?”

  “The fire marshal won’t find my prints on the bottle fragments.”

  “You wore gloves?”

  “I had nothing to do with the arson. I had no desire to kill her, just as I had no desire to kill Virginia Rinaldi. Think it over, Detective. I’m sure you’ve read my sheet. If I wanted to kill that girl, do you think I’d announce it and threaten her? I’d simply do it—and you’d never find the body. But you know I’m clean. I’m a different person. Christ lives in me now.”

  “You found out she wasn’t living at her apartment, so you thought it would be a good idea to scare the shit out of her by torching the place—that would get her out of Rawlings.”

  “No, I’d do what I do: I say what I want to say—in public, for everyone to hear. I’d get the weight of public opinion on my side. I’d come right out and say what I think and take the consequences.”

  “Or maybe you’d come right out and say what you think—then torch her place. That way, you’d be the thug you are and get your way, but the public would think you’re the voice of righteousness and peace, stepping in where others have failed to enforce the rules of … what?”

  “Decency and morality?”

  “Do you have an alibi?”

  “For last night?”

  “Yeah, last night. Around nine.”

  “I was in a meeting with my group. We were at the Pizza Hut, off University. We broke up around ten-thirty. You might stop by. The waitress was a girl named Candy. She had ink on her right arm.” He slid his finger down his forearm to show me. “Chinese characters. She might remember us. The bill was over a hundred bucks. I gave her a twenty for the tip.”

  “You can give me a list of who your buddies were. And I imagine they’ll all swear you were there the whole time.”

  “You asked me if I had an alibi. Not if you would believe it. Listen, we could debate this all day long, but until you find some evidence that links me to any harassment or the arson, I’m going to leave, okay? You stay in touch.” He started to pack his pistol into a case. “There’s one more thing you need to know about me. I’m not an arsonist.” He tapped the pistol case with his finger. “More of a marksman.”

  Chapter 26

  “Shit.”

  “Well said.”

  “You making fun of me?” We were standing in the shooting range, gazing at the well-ventilated paper thug about twenty yards down the lane. Richard Albright had just left after explaining to us why we weren’t going to be able to nail him for torching Abby’s apartment and killing her roommate.

  “Not at all,” Ryan said. “I agree with you. I know exactly what you’re going to say next, and I agree completely.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “You’re going to say, ‘Goddammit, I was hoping it was him. He’s a bad dude, but he’s not a stupid bad dude. He knows we have his prints on file, so even if he was trying to kill Abby or scare the shit out of her, he wouldn’t leave his prints on the bottle.’ Then you’d bookend it with one more ‘Shit’ for emphasis to show how frustrated you were that we hadn’t wrapped up the investigation.”

  “For a polite young man, you’re quite obnoxious.”

  He offered me one of his big grins. “I take it that means I was right.”

  “No. Well, yes, in a very obvious way—”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re right in that Albright is too smart to leave any evidence behind. But the real reason I know he didn’t torch Abby’s place is that he’s too egotistical. He’s not gonna wait till it gets dark, skulk around her apartment, and toss a Molotov cocktail through her window. That’s too timid. He’s gonna decide whether she deserves to live or die. If she’s gonna live, he’ll make speeches and write letters with his name on them. If she’s gonna die, he’ll kill her—and take credit for it.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “I buy that. So who’s left?”

  “Let’s go through it,” I said. “Robert Rinaldi, Virginia’s son.”

  “Who we can’t locate and who has no criminal record. There’s Krista and her pimp, Christopher James Barlow.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not Krista. She cared about Virginia. Loved her. Or something. I don’t know what it was, but she didn’t kill her.”

  “Christopher James Barlow didn’t love Virginia.”

  “True, but he’s a pro, like Richard Albright. If he killed Virginia—or torched Abby’s apartment—he wouldn’t leave any evidence. We already know it’s not his DNA under Virginia’s fingernails. Plus, he’s got a wife who understands the law—she knows she doesn’t have to testify against her spouse. So she’ll alibi him for anything we charge him with. We’re not gonna be able to touch him.”

  “Unless the fire marshal pulls his prints off the bottle—”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” I said.

  “That leaves Abby Demarest and the fraternity boy, Martin Hunt.”

  “You’re practically their age,” I said. “Spin me a scenario.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows to let me know he was never their age, even if the three of them were born the same day. “Say they’re involved with each other.”

  “Okay, they’re screwing. But why do they want to kill Virginia?”

  “You said, ‘Spin me a scenario.’ I’m not done spinning.”

  “Abby falls for Krista because she’s such a good lay.”

  “You’re a poet,” Ryan said.

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t go back and watch the video three or four times. Abby wants Virginia out of the way. She asks Marty to help her.”

  Ryan frowned. “I don’t see Marty making an effort to help Abby.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “Marty is completely Marty-centric. He hires Krista to do five guys at the party, then drugs her and brings in an extra five. If Marty is screwing Abby, it’s because she’s fulfilling some need for him, not to help her explore her Sapphic side.”

  I just looked at him. “What?”

  “Marty wouldn’t help Abby go les or bi.”

  I got a flash, but then it disappeared
. That happens to me a lot these days: I get an idea but it vaporizes before I can grab it. “You said ‘Marty-centric.’”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  “Okay. Martin Hunt is an unimaginative utilitarian. He believes that people want to achieve happiness—whatever that means to them—and avoid unhappiness. For Marty, happiness comes from pleasure and power. Remember when you got him to shit his pants?”

  “More clearly than I’d like.”

  “What was he afraid of?” Ryan said.

  “A rape conviction.”

  Ryan nodded his head. “His biggest fear is prison, as well as all the downstream effects: being unable to get a good job, being listed as a sex offender, et cetera. What I’m saying is, Marty is a very limited guy in that he cannot imagine the lives of other people. He can’t empathize, or else he wouldn’t have drugged Krista at the party—”

  “Or hired her in the first place.”

  “That’s right. He sees other people only as economic actors that want to help him achieve his goals—or prevent him from doing so.”

  “All right,” I said. “He sees people as things. Let’s say you’re right. So what is his relationship with Abby?”

  “He could be sleeping with her, but it wouldn’t be romantic. It would be transactional.”

  “But he’s willing to screw prostitutes. So it’s not about getting laid.”

  “Correct,” Ryan said. “That’s not the kind of transaction he’s interested in—at least not with Abby. If he’s screwing her, it’s because he gets some ego gratification about screwing a girl like her—”

  “You mean attractive?”

  “It could be that he finds her attractive. Or blonde. Maybe she’s Catholic or left-handed or vegetarian. It’s an algebraic unknown. It’s x. It could be anything. Maybe he always wanted a girlfriend. The point is it’s a transaction, not a relationship with a person.”

  This time the idea flashed in my mind and I was able to grab it and hold on. “What’s the most basic transaction?”

  Ryan said, “Money.”

  I smiled. “He ran the camera.”

  Ryan nodded. “He shot the video of Abby and Krista.”

  “Then he uploaded it to the porn site.”

  “To make money.”

  “Yeah, but more than that.” I was getting excited. There’s nothing like making the leap that breaks a case. “What’s cooler than being the pimp behind a porn star?”

  “As an economic model, it’s far better than being a traditional pimp. A guy like Christopher James Barlow is stuck in a nineteenth-century industrial model. Martin Hunt is using a twentieth-first-century information model.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s it, Karen. You got it. A traditional pimp gets a cut every time his girl does a trick. But she has to do the trick for either of them to make any money. It’s like building cars. To make any money, you have to build and sell another car. But a porn pimp makes one car and sells it over and over. The site owner takes a cut, but if the product catches on, his market can expand geometrically. All from one video. He rides that as long as he can, then he makes another video, which will do better than the first one.”

  “So who killed Virginia Rinaldi, and why?” I said. “Marty, Abby?”

  “Abby or Marty—or the two of them. Either of them is big enough to do it alone. Together, they wouldn’t break a sweat.”

  “So the tissue under Virginia’s nails could be Marty’s. He doesn’t have a record. It’s not on file anywhere.”

  “But we still don’t have the motive nailed down.” Ryan looked hesitant. He likes to nail everything down.

  “Does it really matter?”

  “I think Larry Klein would like a coherent story.”

  I waved my hand dismissively. “Forget Larry. We’re gonna get the killers to tell us a coherent story. When they confess.”

  “All right, Detective.” Ryan wore a hint of a smile. “Should I just head home and watch some sports, or would you like to tell me how we’re going to do this?”

  I was thinking about how to explain it to Ryan when the guy from the desk opened the door and stuck his head in. “You two want to do some shootin’? On the house?”

  “No,” I said to him. “We’re good. Thanks.”

  Ryan turned back to me. “Want to tell me in the cruiser?”

  “Yeah.” We thanked the guy again as we walked out of his smoky office. It was good to escape the cigarette smoke and the acrid smell of spent gunpowder. The sun was up, the sky cloudless. I leaned against the hood of the Charger. Ryan stood there, hands on hips, waiting for the plan.

  “I’m gonna tell you the plan. You’re gonna tell me not to do it.”

  “It’s that bad a plan?”

  “No, it’s an excellent plan, but you’re gonna tell me not to do it. Because it’s unprofessional.”

  “Don’t I get an opportunity to decide?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Here it is. The killer—whoever it is, from Virginia’s son to Krista and her pimp to Richard Albright to the two students—is sitting pretty now. They know we don’t have any forensics to put them at Virginia’s house or we’d have brought them in already. And they assume we won’t get anything off the arson.”

  “You’re assuming the same person did both crimes.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m not a chief of police or a university counsel. I add up two plus two, eight times out of ten I get four. Okay, we’re running around like idiots, and the killer is hanging loose because we don’t have any forensics and we can’t figure out the motive. You with me?”

  Ryan shifted his weight. “I am. Continue.”

  “You say Larry Klein would like a coherent story. We don’t have one. So we make one up.”

  Ryan tilted his head. “Won’t that make him sad when he wants to file charges?”

  “Don’t be a jackass. By the time he wants to file charges, he’ll have the real story.”

  “Which we don’t know yet.”

  “But which the killer will tell us.”

  “All right, Karen. Have you already made up your phony coherent story?”

  “Krista killed Virginia Rinaldi.”

  He nodded. “Why did she do that?”

  “Virginia discovered she was stealing things from the house and threatened to go to the police.”

  “That’s terrible. What was Krista stealing?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I waved my hand. “Silver. She stole the silver. Virginia had a nice set she’d inherited from her parents. It had great sentimental value to her. One day, she opens the box. It’s empty. Krista pawned it. They get in a fight. Virginia goes down the stairs.”

  “Stealing silver. Doesn’t sound that exciting.”

  A double tractor trailer rumbled past us, spewing diesel fumes that disappeared into the blue sky.

  I waited a second so Ryan could hear me. “It doesn’t have to be exciting, numbskull. It has to be plausible. Krista’s a prostitute. Stealing shit is part of her skill set. Virginia doesn’t have any small, expensive things—no jewelry or any girl stuff. Krista stole the silver.”

  “Okay, now what are we going to do with this phony coherent story?”

  “We’re going to spread the word to all the players.”

  “Including Krista?”

  “Yes, Krista is the most important person. If she doesn’t sign off on it, it won’t work.”

  “And the others? Krista’s pimp? Richard Albright? Abby and Martin?”

  “All of them.”

  “How do we get to Abby? We don’t have a phone for her.”

  “Mary Dawson does.”

  Ryan frowned as he thought through whether Mary Dawson would play along. “What if she tells Arthur Vines? It’ll take five minutes for Vines to contact the chief. Ten minutes for us to get fired.”

  “No, she’s not gonna tell Vines.”

  “Because?”

 
“Because I’ll explain to her why she shouldn’t. If she wants us to catch whoever killed Virginia—and Jennifer Taylor—she’s going to cooperate.”

  “If Vines doesn’t know what we’re doing, I assume the chief doesn’t, either.”

  “That’s right, the chief doesn’t know. It’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”

  “And once we tell everyone we’re going to arrest Krista for Virginia’s murder, what happens next?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “Are you planning to?”

  “Of course. I’m planning to. But I’m not sure what’s gonna happen next.”

  “I don’t like it.” He was shaking his head.

  “Good. I don’t want you to like it. Now tell me you feel strongly I shouldn’t do it. And if I decide to do it, I should get the chief’s okay first.”

  “Consider it said.”

  “Okay, you’ve registered your objections.”

  “But you’re going to do it anyway?”

  “No. I’m not gonna do it. So there’s no reason for you to tell the chief.”

  “All right. I won’t.”

  “One other thing, Ryan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Leave your phone on.”

  “It’s always on.”

  “Good, let me drop you back at headquarters.”

  “Are you done?”

  “What?”

  “Are you done with why you have to do this alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m riding along. You don’t have a plan. You’ll end up dead.”

  “You’ll be fired.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You’ll get fired. I’ll just get a formal reprimand. You know, youthful indiscretion. I’m very impressionable. Especially with mother figures.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Asshole.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” He put on a sheepish expression, then looked down at his shoes. “Mommy.”

  Chapter 27

  We drove over to Krista’s apartment. Even if we did have her phone number, we wouldn’t have called. It’s better to show up unannounced. Suspects get antsy two or three days after a murder. Guilty or not, they’re afraid they’re going to be arrested. In this situation, with the arson death all over the news, there were plenty of reasons for Krista to jump in her car and take off. Now we just had to hope she was home.