Cold Justice (Kali O'Brien series Book 5)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “Don’t son me. It sounds so phony, like we have some sort of relationship.”

  “We don’t?” Keep it light, Owen reminded himself.

  Alex folded his arms over his chest. “This was my house before it was hers.”

  What did the house have to do with it? Alex had been living on his own for over two years. “Alex, I want nothing more than for us to get along, but you’ve got to do your part.”

  “My part?” Alex’s voice spiraled in the course of two words. His tone was laced with anger. “What about your part?”

  “That’s what—”

  “You were never here for us. Ever. You still aren’t, except when it serves your own purpose.”

  Owen was stung as much by Alex’s hostility as by the words. Part of him wanted to lash out, argue the point, but he bought time to calm himself. “Us?” he asked.

  “Mom and me. You were always too busy. Always trying to make yourself look important.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You were so caught up in your own importance, you barely noticed she died.”

  Owen set his beer can down on the coaster. “What are you—”

  “You kept right on with that stupid trial like nothing had happened.”

  “I had a duty, Alex. We were in the middle of a very important and very high-profile trial. I couldn’t just walk away.”

  The expression on Alex’s face was dark and twisted with anger. Though he said nothing, Owen knew what he was thinking—that Owen had a duty to his family as well. That had come through loud and clear during the counseling sessions. What Alex didn’t understand was that life rarely presented itself in simple either/or format. Far more common were the trade-offs and tensions of conflicting obligations. Those were things adults understood.

  Alex continued to look at him. “It’s your fault she’s dead, you know.” The very quietness of his son’s voice was as disturbing to Owen as the earlier anger.

  “Alex, please.”

  “It is. If you’d cared about her, it never would have happened. She wouldn’t have been so depressed. She wouldn’t have been taking all those pills. You might even have noticed she needed help.

  “She was getting help,” Owen snapped.

  “Sure. More pills.”

  The official cause of death was accidental overdose, and Owen fervently believed that was what had happened. Did that mean he was totally blameless? No. In fact, he’d often questioned his own role in failing to make Marilyn happy. It wasn’t true that he hadn’t loved her, however. He had. Maybe not in the way she’d wanted, but he’d done his best.

  “Alex, your mom had been troubled—”

  “From the time I was born. I know that.”

  “Even before that.” The last thing Alex needed was to feel himself responsible for her unhappiness. “Your mother had always—” The phone rang and Owen started to rise.

  “Let the machine pick it up,” Alex said. “We’re having a conversation. “ The last comment was snide.

  “It might be important,” Owen explained on his way to the phone. “I won’t be long.” He answered and was greeted by Jack Jackson.

  “Hey, Owen, sorry to bother you at home.”

  “What’s up, Jack?”

  “Just wondering what went on today out at the house on Willow.”

  Owen caught Alex’s eye and held up a finger, indicating he’d just be a minute. Then he turned back to the phone. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, Jack.”

  “There were a couple of police cars parked in front all morning.”

  “So? This is a city. Police cars end up in front of all too many houses. I hear about only a fraction of them, and then usually after the fact.”

  “Here’s what’s interesting,” Jackson said. “Detectives Fortune and Keating were there, too. Aren’t they working exclusively on the recent murders?”

  Owen felt uneasiness snake down his spine. He tried not to let it show. “Jack, I’m the district attorney, not the chief of police. Why don’t you ask them what they were doing there?”

  “I tried. They told me to get lost.”

  “That surprises you?” Owen was anxious to end the call and reach someone who could tell him what was going on.

  “If it was a simple burglary, wouldn’t they just say so?”

  “Depends.”

  “Why would they be called out on a burglary anyway?”

  Owen heard a car door slam. He looked out the window. “I’ve got to go, Jack. Sorry.” He hung up abruptly and got to the door just as Alex pulled away from the curb.

  <><><>

  Lou shoved his hands into his pockets to warm them. The day was overcast and very cold. He noticed that the small puddle of water in the gutter was still frozen.

  Parked at the curb was the red Mustang registered to Ruby Wings.

  “You called for the tow truck?” Lou asked.

  Keating nodded. “Should be here any minute.”

  Lou didn’t think they’d find a body. He put a lot of trust in his nose, and his nose told him the trunk would be empty. He suspected the interior would be clean too. But they wouldn’t know for sure until the car was towed, the trunk opened, and the evidence team had finished working its magic.

  A patrol officer had discovered the car earlier this morning parked in a metered, two-hour zone near Jack London Square. There were three tickets on the windshield, all issued yesterday.

  “Wouldn’t you think,” Lou muttered, “that by the third one the meter maid might get the idea that something more than a long lunch was involved?”

  “You’d think so.” Keating wasn’t in a talkative mood. In fact, he’d been grumpy all morning.

  “I see a number of different scenarios here,” Lou said after a moment. It wasn’t so much that he was aching for conversation as trying to make sense of the evidence they had. “One, someone else drove her car here for whatever reason, maybe to throw us off. Two, she drove it here herself. She could have gotten into trouble here and the stuff at the house was just frosting on the cake.”

  “Or three,” Keating added, “none of the above.”

  “Either she drove it here or she didn’t.”

  Keating shook his head. “She could have lent it to a friend. It could have been stolen. She could have driven it here, locked herself out, and taken a cab home. The possibilities are almost limitless.”

  “Smart-ass.” Keating was right, of course, and that irritated Lou. “Why don’t you try a few of the local establishments. See if anyone remembers seeing her. I’ll wait for the tow truck.”

  “Do you still have that photo of her?”

  “In the car.”

  Keating retrieved the photo and disappeared into a restaurant across the street. Lou saw him emerge and then enter another building farther down the block. The department tow truck arrived, and the driver went to work hitching the car.

  “Is there a body in there?” the driver asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Gives me the heebie-jeebies thinking I’m towing a body. Happened once.” He looked through the window. “Inside looks clean. I’ve towed some gruesome stuff.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Keating returned about five minutes later with a smile on his face. “It’s our lucky day, Lou. A bartender with a good memory and an orderly stash of charge slips. Not only was she here Sunday evening, I have the name of the woman she was with. A Carla O’Neill. I already called it in and got the address. Want to head over there now?”

  Lou checked with the driver to make sure he had everything he needed from them. The car would be towed and the evidence team would go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Lou wanted to be there when they opened it, but the wheels of procedure ground slowly. He knew if he followed the driver there now, he’d end up cooling his heels on the other end for an hour or so. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  Carla O’Neill lived in an older, two-story stucco house in the Crocker Highlands area of Oak
land. Like the other houses on the street, hers was well maintained and neatly landscaped. This was the kind of neighborhood Jan had always wanted. But every raise Lou got, the cost of housing went higher too. Now it didn’t matter. If it weren’t for his garden, Lou would sell the house and move into an apartment. He didn’t need more than a bed and a table, and even the latter he could do without.

  Lou rang the bell. He could hear a television cartoon show playing inside.

  A raven-haired woman opened the door. She looked at them and instantly her face fell.

  “Carla O’Neill?”

  She nodded. “You’re with the police, aren’t you?”

  Another one, Lou thought. How could they tell?

  She didn’t wait for an answer. “Is it about Ruby?”

  “What makes you ask that?” The suspicion in Keating’s voice was only thinly veiled.

  “Oh, dear. I knew it.” Carla pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her eyes wide with worry. “Is she hurt?”

  “Missing.” Lou pressed the earlier question. “What made you think something had happened to her?”

  “I’ve had this awful feeling. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost like we can read each other’s minds sometimes. And. . .” Her voice trailed off. She looked at Keating and then Lou. “What do you mean, ‘missing?’”

  “Mind if we come in?”

  She stepped back and directed them toward the dining room with a sweep of her arm. “The kids are watching TV in the living room.”

  Lou could see two little heads peering over the cushions of the sofa. He waved at them and they dove for cover, giggling.

  Carla sat at one end of the oak-plank table; Keating and Lou sat on either side of her.

  “You were with Ruby Wings Sunday evening?” Keating asked.

  Carla seemed momentarily stunned. “Wow, you’re good. How did you figure that out?”

  “The bartender had the credit card receipts.”

  “Ah.”

  Keating asked, “Which of you left first?”

  “We left together. Ruby had a bit too much to drink, and I insisted on driving her home.”

  That explained the car. “What time did you leave?” Lou asked.

  “About nine.”

  “Anyone follow you?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else unusual?”

  Carla O’Neill shook her head. “No, I. . . Wait a minute, I remember the porch light was off. Ruby noticed it too. She said something about forgetting to turn it on, but she sounded kind of perplexed by it. And then the strangest thing happened. I woke up about midnight in a panic. Bolt awake out of a sound sleep with a horrible sense that Ruby was in trouble.”

  Keating shot Lou a glance. “What made you think that?”

  “Like I said, we have this kind of. . . I don’t know what to call it. It’s almost like ESP or something. I kept telling myself I’d had a bad dream, was all, but then I couldn’t sleep, so I called her. The machine picked up.”

  “What about later? Did you try calling again?”

  “The next morning. I’d offered to drive her back to pick up her car, but then I overslept, and since she hadn’t called me. . . Anyway, she didn’t answer. I figured she’d taken a cab or bummed a ride from someone else and was already on her way to work.”

  “You were worried enough about her to call in the middle of the night, but you didn’t follow up?” Lou asked. For all her talk about being able to read Ruby’s mind, Carla O’Neill seemed to have adopted a fairly passive posture in all this.

  “By morning it didn’t seem so odd. And we’d had kind of a . . .” She bit her bottom lip. “A difference of opinion that night. I told myself she was just keeping her distance.”

  “What did you argue about?” Lou asked. To hell with this difference of opinion crap.

  Carla seemed to weigh her words before answering. “Girl stuff,” she said after a moment. “How did you find out she was missing?”

  “The neighbor noticed an open door and signs of a struggle. Called us. It was clear something wasn’t right. She never showed up for work yesterday, either.”

  “So no one has seen or heard from her since I dropped her off?” There was a rising tide of alarm in Carla’s voice.

  “Seems that way.”

  “What wasn’t right about the house?” she asked.

  “There were clothes laid out on her bed,” Keating explained.

  Carla’s expression was puzzled. “Like she was packing for a trip?”

  “Like she’d laid out a complete outfit, shoes and all. The dress was red, tiny straps, deep slits up both sides.”

  “Sequins across the bodice? It’s one she bought for a special dinner last year. You think she was getting ready to go out?”

  “Do you think so?”

  Carla scraped some wax from the tabletop with her thumbnail. “Not Sunday night, for sure.”

  “There was also a poem on the bed,” Lou added. He recited it for her. “Does it make any sense to you?”

  Carla O’Neill’s face had gone white. “That part about the bikini. Ruby was shopping for a bathing suit on Saturday. I was with her. One of the ones she tried on was a pink bikini.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Kali picked up the phone and punched Owen’s extension. She dreaded making the call, but delaying would only make matters worse. Kurt Lancaster had passed the lie detector test with flying colors. And now, with Ruby Wings’s disappearance, it made no sense to continue the case against him.

  From a legal perspective, there was no problem dropping the charges. It happened routinely when new evidence was brought to bear on a case, or when prosecutors realized the case was too weak to try. But in this instance, the political repercussions were going to be a nightmare. Not only was the actual killer still on the loose, prowling for his next victim, they’d arrested an innocent man. Again, would be the inference. Lancaster’s release was sure to be headline news and talk-show fodder, all of it fueling the debate about Davis.

  Kali let the phone ring three times. She was ready to hang up before it could roll over to Owen’s secretary when she sensed someone standing in her open doorway. She looked up to see Owen himself.

  “I was just calling you,” she said.

  “And here I am.” He entered and shut the door behind him. His brow was furrowed and Kali noticed, for the first time, dark circles under his eyes. He stood behind one of the chairs facing her, gripping its back with his hands. “Is it as bad as I think?”

  “It’s not good. What have you heard?”

  “Only that we might have another murder on our hands. Jackson called me, said he’d seen Keating and Fortune at a house out in the Dimond district. As far as I know, they’re only working one case.”

  Kali picked up her pen and ran a thumb along the side of it. “The good news is that it’s not a murder. Yet.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “It looks like the work of our killer.” She told him about Ruby Wings’s disappearance, the clothes laid on her bed along with a yellow rose and a typed poem. “It was sort of haiku,” she added.

  A nerve in Owen’s jaw twitched. “Lancaster’s still in jail?”

  “Right. There’s no way he was anywhere near Ruby Wings’s house. What’s more, he’s got a reasonable explanation for having Jane Parkhurst’s library card and purse in his possession. And he passed a lie detector test.”

  Owen made a sound, as though he’d had the air knocked out of him. He came around and sat down in the chair, pressed his fingers against his temples. “The media is going to jump on this,” he groaned. “And you can be sure my name is going to show up in neon.”

  “People can hardly blame you for the murders, Owen.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “You know how these things take on a life of their own. Logic has nothing to do with it. Look at what’s happened in the press already.”

  Some of the coverage had leaned toward sensationalism. Fed, no doubt, by Tony Molina in his increas
ingly frenetic appeal for support. But Kali credited most voters with enough common sense not to be swayed. “How can people think badly of you for declining to prosecute an innocent man?” she asked.

  “Lancaster’s not the real issue. It’s what the recent murders imply about the Bayside Strangler case that has people riled up. Until we can tie up these new cases, doubts about Davis’s guilt are going to continue to shadow me.”

  Owen got up, paced to the tiny window behind Kali’s desk, then back to the chair. “What do we have so far with this disappearance? Any leads on what might have happened?”

  Kali shook her head. “The feeling is that someone broke into her house and took her from there. They found tool marks on one of the windows. A couple of the inside lights were on, so speculation is that it happened at night.”

  “Breaking into a home is a first for him, isn’t it?”

  “So is laying out her clothes.”

  “And neither was a pattern the Bayside Strangler followed.”

  Owen seemed to be struggling to find a ray of hope in the differences.

  “Right. Our killer is copying the old murders, but he’s layering on his own signature as well. Little by little. The lipstick in Jane Parkhurst’s murder was a new touch, as was the photograph.”

  “Reminds me of those goddamn bacteria that mutate every time scientists get a fix on them.”

  “It is a little like that.” Only in our case, Kali thought, we never even got a fix on the killer.

  “I hope to God he’s only copying the earlier murders,” Owen said irritably.

  “Are you having doubts about Davis?”

  “I try not to go there, Kali, even in my own mind. But sometimes I wonder, what if it’s the Strangler himself who’s evolving? Or maybe, as you yourself suggested, there were two killers all along.”

  “Why wait all these years to start up again?”

  “Who knows. Maybe Davis’s execution rekindled something in him.” Owen pressed a palm to his forehead. “You got any aspirin? My head is killing me.”

  Kali rummaged around in her purse for the plastic pill case she carried and handed it to him. “I agree that none of this is terrific news, but since there’s nothing you can do about it right now, it’s probably best to try not to let it get to you.”