The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Still, Charlie felt oddly ashamed. “I’m sorry. We do the best we can.” And it wasn’t as if they had found anything that shed light on the murder. No scraps of paper with mysterious notations, no answering machine messages from cryptic callers. He had even gone through Colleen’s key ring, looking for a strange key that might open a powerful secret: a safety deposit box, a PO box, a secret lover’s apartment. But every key had fit into a known lock.

  “Violet, I don’t think I’ve seen you since this summer,” Mia said brightly, trying to press the restart button on the conversation. “I can’t get over your hair.” She reached out to ruffle the bottom edge of it.

  With a grimace Violet stepped back. “I figured I had to live up to the stupid hippie name Mom gave me. As soon as I got back to school I dyed it.”

  Mia and Charlie exchanged glances, then followed her into the living room with its worn but beautiful oriental carpet in shades of red, royal blue, and gold. Charlie and Mia took a seat on the red velvet couch, while Violet sat on a brown leather Morris chair and hugged her knees to her chest. It was a strange feeling to be back in a room you had only recently searched. Charlie knew what was on the bookcase, on the shelves, in the drawers.

  “So who did it?” Violet demanded. “Who killed my mom?”

  “We’re working on a number of angles that involve her work as a prosecutor,” Charlie said. “But we could use your help figuring out more about your mom’s personal life.”

  She snorted. “So you’re saying you have no idea?”

  “Violet!” Mia said.

  Charlie took a deep breath. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying we are pursuing a number of leads. And we need your help. To start with, when was the last time you saw your mother, talked to her, e-mailed her, texted her . . .”

  Mia shot him a look. It was a question you would ask a suspect, and she had already informed him that there was no way Violet could be one. But she had also said Violet was a sweet, quiet girl, so her judgment was suspect. And it was possible, if Violet had driven very fast, that she could have driven up to Seattle, shot her mom, and arrived back in Olympia in time to be notified by the campus police about her mother’s murder.

  Still, this crime felt oddly impersonal. People who killed family members usually acted out of an outsized anger that had built up for years. An anger that didn’t dissipate until the victim had been nearly obliterated—stabbed dozens of times or beaten past all recognition. But here death had come through a single shot. There had been no overkill. And no shame afterward, no need to cover the victim’s face with a rug or sheet. A pane of glass had separated the killer from the victim, both in reality and symbolically. This felt like an execution, carried out by someone who came away with clean hands and experienced no guilt at the sight of Colleen sprawled on her old vinyl LPs, gargling her own blood.

  “My mom called on Saturday night but I was kind of busy, so we didn’t talk long. It was all her just wanting to know stuff about my life and all.” Violet pressed her lips together. “I’ve told her that nobody else I know talks to their mom that much.”

  There. Charlie hadn’t imagined it. Her lower lip was trembling. This girl was all hot emotion. Although he had seen killers weep before.

  Mia leaned forward. “Has your mom seemed upset about anything lately?”

  A shrug. “I don’t think so.” Her face was very pale, making the smattering of freckles across her nose stand out.

  “Has she talked about any case that bothered her?” Mia asked.

  Violet shook her head. “Mom doesn’t ever talk about work. Maybe she didn’t think I was old enough.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t want to worry you,” Mia said gently. “Maybe she was afraid it would make you think the world was a dark and scary place.”

  “Isn’t it?” Violet said. “Someone just assassinated my mom.”

  “Assassinated?” Charlie echoed.

  “Maybe that’s not the right term.” Her mouth twisted. “But somebody must have killed her just for doing her job.”

  “Aside from people she prosecuted, do you know if your mom had any enemies?” Charlie asked.

  “Mom? No. My mom?” Violet smirked. “Mom just wanted people to be happy. She always had some stray she was taking care of. I’m not talking animals, I’m talking people. If someone at church looked lonely, she’d ask them home for dinner. I remember one Thanksgiving she invited this old man with no teeth. I had to sit across from him and watch him slurp oatmeal.” Violet shuddered, secure in her belief that such a fate could never befall her. “And when the lady across the street lost her job, Mom used to get Costco packs of mac and cheese and leave them on the porch for her and her two kids before they got evicted.” She straightened up and put her feet on the floor. “This neighborhood isn’t as safe as it was when I was a kid. There’s lots of empty houses now, because of the recession. People have had their cars prowled, and someone up the street said she saw a strange guy in her backyard. Do you think that might have something to do with what happened to Mom?”

  Charlie and Mia exchanged a look. Car prowls were usually kids with too much freedom, trying door handles until they got lucky and could make off with meter change and a few CDs, maybe an MP3 player. But the idea of a stranger standing in a backyard in Colleen’s neighborhood gave Charlie pause.

  What if Colleen’s death was the result of some unstable homeless guy’s whim—a brightly lit window, a figure walking past it, a voice telling him to pull the trigger? That kind of crime—motiveless, with no connection between the killer and the victim—was almost impossible to solve, unless the killer struck again and again.

  It was also extremely rare.

  “Break-ins, car prowls—those are crimes of opportunity,” Charlie said. “But I don’t see how a stranger would benefit from shooting your mom. And in my experience, people are murdered for reasons. Maybe not good reasons, but still reasons. Is there anyone your mom hasn’t gotten along with lately?”

  “Yeah. My dad. But Dad would never, like, what, kill Mom?” Violet snorted to show how ridiculous the idea was.

  “What have they been fighting about?” Mia asked. “I thought Colleen got along pretty well with Martin.”

  “He and his wife adopted a baby this summer. Did Mom tell you that?”

  Mia nodded.

  “I guess they finally gave up on that in vitro. Which I don’t know why they didn’t before, because they are, like, old. And this baby of theirs—I’m old enough to be its mother. The whole thing must have cost a lot, because Dad started complaining when it came time to write the tuition check.” She turned to Charlie. “See, when they got divorced, my dad told my mom he would pay for my college. It’s not like I expect him to do everything. I work part-time, and my mom helps pay for my room and board. But even though it’s a public college, it still costs twenty thousand a year, and what I make isn’t enough to cover tuition and books and all those other things.”

  Could that be a motive? But if Violet’s dad had wanted to stop paying his kid’s tuition, wouldn’t it have been a better solution, if far more cold-blooded, to kill the daughter rather than the mother?

  “This term,” Violet continued, “Dad’s only paid part of the tuition. The last time I talked to him I could actually hear his wife in the background telling him what to say.”

  “Your stepmother,” Charlie supplied.

  Violet made a face. “I guess so, but I’ve never called her that. Gina’s only fourteen years older than me, but she likes to pretend it’s even less than that.”

  “How about your mom’s other personal relationships?” Charlie asked. “Do you know if she was dating?”

  When Violet nodded, Mia blinked. “Really?”

  “Right before I went back to college, I went into her office. Her computer was open to that dating website, eHeartMatch, and some guy had sent her a flirty note. At first I couldn’t believe it. I mean, my mom? She’s over fifty.”

  Charlie had the feeling that
in Violet’s eyes he and Mia were both practically in the grave.

  “Maybe she was worried about being lonely. I’d already made it clear to her that I wasn’t going to be coming home very much this year.” Violet set her jaw. “I told her that I have my own life now.” Her eyes told him that she heard the irony in her own words.

  “We’re checking to see what forensics can get off her computer,” Charlie said. “You don’t remember this guy’s name, do you?”

  “No. It was like a jokey name, you know, a screen name.” She took a deep breath. “Do you have to look at everything from my mom’s computer?”

  “Why?” Charlie asked. Was there something Violet had written her mom that she was afraid they would find?

  “Because it’s private. I mean, when my mom wrote all her e-mails, she didn’t imagine someone else reading them.”

  The dead didn’t have any privacy. Maybe it was a good thing they were dead. “Think of us like doctors,” Charlie said. “We’ve seen it all before.”

  Violet frowned. “That actually doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  Thirty minutes later, having gained no real insights, Charlie and Mia left. As he opened his car door, Charlie had the sensation he was being watched. He froze and looked all around him. The street was deserted. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling.

  CHAPTER 16

  From this window on the second floor you could see into nearly every room in Colleen Miller’s house.

  And if you didn’t have a TV set, it was nearly as good as one. Although you didn’t know what you would get and you couldn’t change the channel even if you wanted to.

  You could watch the policemen swarm over the house with their cameras and their brushes and their fingerprint powders. They spent most of their time in the basement, although they appeared in other windows too. And then they went away.

  Violet roamed from room to room, crying.

  The neighbors came bearing casserole dishes.

  Today the woman with the blond hair who had been here so many times before came back, even if there was now no Colleen to visit. She was with the dark-haired detective who had conferred with the policeman.

  But none of them knew they were being watched. This house was empty. Had been for months.

  That was what they thought.

  But they were wrong.

  CHAPTER 17

  As she sat at her desk trying to triage her e-mails, Mia couldn’t get over the idea that Colleen had been dating. Or maybe what she couldn’t get over was that Colleen hadn’t said anything to her about it. Had she been embarrassed about using an online dating service? Or had they not been as close as Mia thought?

  Charlie knocked on her door, interrupting her thoughts. Police headquarters was just three blocks from the county courthouse. “I asked our computer forensics guy to separate out anything related to Colleen’s love life and make two copies,” he said. “He said to give him an hour.”

  Mia nodded, distracted. Charlie smelled like french fries. He must have hit the drive-through on his way back. Her stomach rumbled. There hadn’t been any leftovers to pack this morning, and breakfast had been a cereal bar eaten in the car. This was going to be one of those days when lunch came from vending machines.

  “Okay,” she said. “And I made an appointment for us to meet the Danes at their house at four. The mom’s a nurse and she gets off at three thirty.”

  Charlie remained on his feet. “Let’s talk about what we know so far. Do you have a flip chart? It helps me think.”

  “There might be one in the supply room.” Mia went into the hall, and Charlie followed. The supply room was jammed, mostly with discards—broken printers, chipped laminate bookcases, discarded binders. These were piled haphazardly among items that were still actually useful. Sometimes it was easier to put something in the supply room than to fill out the paperwork required to get rid of it.

  In the far corner Mia spied a silver flip chart. She picked her way toward it, Charlie at her heels. Reaching for it, she stepped on something small and round that rolled away from her, suddenly pitching her backward. She crashed into Charlie. He caught her with one hand on her shoulder and the other on her waist. Mia jerked upright, her cheeks flaming. She grabbed the flip chart and thrust it into Charlie’s hands. On her way out, she snatched up the brown marker that had nearly caused her to fall.

  Back in her office, Charlie set up the flip chart. She handed him the errant marker, and he made two lines down the paper, dividing it into three. With blocky handwriting he labeled the first column Colleen, the middle Stan, and the last Both. Then he drew in horizontal lines to create a grid.

  “Okay, you’ve got your guy checking the database to see if they have an angry defendant in common.” He wrote Angry Defendant in the Both column. “And we know from Violet that Martin was arguing with Colleen about money. And Violet wasn’t getting along that well with her either.” Martin and Violet went under Colleen’s name. Mia didn’t agree with putting Violet down, but she didn’t argue. “We also know Colleen was dating.” New Boyfriend went in the Colleen column.

  “What about Violet saying there’d been a prowler in the neighborhood?” Mia said.

  “This doesn’t feel random,” Charlie said, but he still added Prowler under Colleen’s name. “But better to start with too many suspects than too few.”

  “Maybe Colleen was the target of some fringe group,” Mia suggested. “She’s prosecuted guys from the Mongol biker gang and the Aryan Nation and probably a few more. I’m sure Stan did too.” She wrote a note to herself on a yellow sticky. “That reminds me to ask our database guy if he has a way of teasing that out.”

  Charlie added Fringe Group to the Both column. After a pause, he added Angry Defendant to both Colleen’s and Stan’s columns. “I guess we shouldn’t overlook the idea that they were killed independently by different defendants.”

  “Both of them were shot with a .22 at night, at home, through a window,” Mia said. “Both of them Seattle prosecutors. Don’t you think that’s too many coincidences?”

  With an edge of impatience Charlie said, “Like I said earlier, we can’t rule anything out, Mia. Not at this stage.”

  She knew he was right, but something about Charlie made her want to argue. “But we can’t draw the circle so wide that everyone is inside it. Otherwise pretty soon you’ll be putting my name up there.”

  His mouth twisted, but he didn’t argue any further. He also didn’t change anything on the flip chart. “So when will your guy have those files for us?”

  “It’ll be tomorrow before Jonas has the paper files. We need them because there are prosecutors’ notes that don’t make it online.”

  “So much for the paperless society.” Charlie stepped back and regarded the chart. “We also need to figure out if there was anything outside of work that Colleen and Stan had in common. Were they friends? Lovers? You told me she bought him pierogies.”

  “That was just Colleen being motherly. I don’t think they really had that much in common.” Something had been nagging at her, though, and Mia’s eyes widened as she remembered what it was. “Wait a minute. They were both pretty active in Safe Seattle.”

  “The gun control group?”

  “Right. They both worked on that measure that made it illegal for people who’ve been in a mental hospital to buy guns.”

  “So you think somebody on the other side decided to take them out?” Charlie pushed out his lips, looking dubious. “That’s taking it pretty far. That’s when you try to get the law repealed. Not go around shooting people. And that law passed when? Ten years ago? Why wait all this time to kill Colleen?”

  “Maybe because she was working with Safe Seattle on a new ballot measure.” Mia tried to remember the specifics. “Something about mandatory trigger locks or background checks at gun shows.” Mia turned to her keyboard, her hands suddenly trembling. She was onto something, she knew it. “Look at this comment some guy calling himself True Patriot left on KIRO�
�s website.”

  Charlie leaned over Mia’s shoulder, close enough that she could feel his breath on the side of her face. He read out loud, “ ‘Now, if only the same would happen to a few thousand more anti-American, anti-constitutional traitors mooching off the public’s dime.’ ” He let out a whistle. “We need to track down that jerk. Can you get a subpoena for the TV station’s website?”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that today.” Mia should have done it yesterday, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly. “Although you’d have to be pretty stupid to post something like that if you’re the one who killed her.”

  “Someone who decides to solve their problems with a gun is not necessarily accessing their higher mental functions.” Charlie wrote Gun Rights in the Both column, then looked at the empty spaces under Stan’s name. “Stan never married, right? Did he have a girlfriend? Guyfriend?”

  “Stan? As far as I know, Stan was married to his job. If he had a love life, he kept it really quiet.”

  “Carmen Zapata worked Stan’s case, but you probably heard she died of breast cancer last year. I need to find out where Stan’s murder book ended up.” A murder book was a fat binder with crime-scene photos, the autopsy report, investigators’ notes, and transcripts of witness interviews. “Then we need to reopen the case. Have you ever worked a cold case before?”

  Mia shook her head.

  “Basically what you do is throw out any ideas from five years ago and start from scratch. Things change, and sometimes you can leverage that. You might interview somebody who lied then, but by now they’ve forgotten exactly what they said. Or they’re no longer in love or in business with someone, so they don’t feel the same pressure to keep quiet.”

  Mia thought back. “The problem is, I don’t think there were that many people to interview. I was out of office when they were investigating his death, but Colleen told me they were coming up empty-handed. They had no witnesses, no death threats, and no obvious enemies.”