In minutes, Jill returned with a tray onto which she’d placed three cups of coffee. Albert knew right away what her MO was; they were having coffee together, in a pleasant attempt to get to know each other.
“My father blends this coffee just for us,” she said. “Well, just for me. I guess you must like good coffee?”
“I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders while he blew across the surface of the coffee to cool it off. “Why am I here?”
“Well, it’s got to do with coffee, believe it or not,” Jill said, putting a small recording device in the center of the table. The recorder was unnecessary, since the room was wired for sound and video, but it was a nice reminder. “I’m going to record our conversation so we get everything right.
“I got nothing to say,” Chris replied.
“You might,” Jill said softly, picking up coffee again. “Someone died. A young, beautiful woman. And we discovered that she got into your car at New Delhi Donut about an hour before she died. Do you want to talk to us about that?”
Chris burst into tears, his shock at the death appearing real to the detectives. Albert watched the transformation; the young, cocky man digressing slowly into a sniveling little boy.
“You got the wrong guy,” he shouted, blubbering.
“I don’t think so,” Jill said, taking out her phone. “Let me show you the video. You’ve got to be so careful nowadays, there are surveillance cameras all over the place.”
Standing up, she walked around the table and leaned over so her elbow was on the table right next to him. Watching his partner, Albert bit his lip to keep from chuckling; Jill had a zero tolerance policy for any kind of sexual misconduct and now she was using all of her feminine wiles to fluster the boy. It was working; Albert watched Chris glance at the phone and to her breasts, although there was barely an illusion of them under her unforgiving bullet-proof vest.
“See, here you are, Chris,” Jill said, using a consoling voice, as she pointed to the screen. “That’s your car, backing up along the bushes at the side of the parking lot. Even Mrs. Cooper didn’t notice you there.”
“You told Mrs. Cooper about this?” he pleaded, sadness about the dead girl temporarily forgotten.
“Keep it together,” Jill said firmly. “If you fall apart now you won’t be able to help us.”
“I’ll tell what happened if you promise not to tell Mrs. Cooper,” he said.
“I’m afraid you don’t get to make any deals, yet,” she said. “Right now, all we know is that a young woman got into your car, and the next day her dead body lay in the gutter.”
Their phones went off at the same time; Faith Cooper had arrived. Albert got up to leave, and Jill kept talking, the boy crying.
“Where’s he going?” Chris asked, sitting on the edge of his chair, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.
“Not to worry, Detective Wong is a big boy,” she said, pulling the chair closer to him. “I want to talk about you. Tell me about Miss Blumenthal.”
“I don’t know what her last name is,” he whined.
“How’d you happen to meet her at the donut shop?”
“I didn’t go to meet her,” he said, looking down at his hands.
“Did you follow her there?”
“No! I tell you I didn’t know her until yesterday,” he lied.
Taking a deep breath, his shoulders shaking up and down, he broke down crying. “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I got no reason to kill her. Everyone was usin’ her, Miss Cooper’s husband, the worst bastard.”
“How’d you know about Miss Blumenthal and Mr. Cooper?”
“Miss Cooper told me,” he said.
Breathing as shallowly as she could, holding back from banging her fist on the table, if what he said was true Faith Cooper had evidently failed to mention a confidential relationship she had with a student.
“Hold that thought,” she said, sending Albert a text.
Our boy claims to know about Cooper and Blumenthal, she texted. Confidential teacher/student chat.
“How’d it come about that Mrs. Cooper shared something so personal with you?” Jill asked, keeping her voice low and steady, trying not to sound accusatory.
“She was crying one day after school. Sittin’ in her car in the parking lot. She’d found out her husband was screwing around with the other woman.”
“What happened next?”
Losing patience, trying to get him to continue with a thought was torture.
“I seen her in her car there, crying. I went over to the car and she said not to worry, but I don’t like to see her upset. She’s been real nice to me. Good to me, getting me help with homework so I’ll graduate next summer. I felt bad for her.”
“Did you stand outside of the car and listen to her story?” Jill asked.
“No, she leaned over and moved her school stuff off the seat so I could sit down.”
“Then what happened?” she asked, fighting for patience.
“She told me her husband was havin’ an affair, that’s all. She was real upset.”
Jill looked at the recording device, a small black box that would fit in her palm. The tape was going around in a circle. At the beginning of a case like this, there were so many loose ends flapping in the breeze, unrelated and haphazard pieces of information that didn’t seem to have much importance. And slowly, the ends had an affinity for each other, moving toward one another like magnets, and each one became part of the whole.
A sick, acid loaded swirl in her stomach signaled she had had too much coffee, for now. But also, that the young man sitting next to her held an important clue, and but for a piece of video tape, they’d never had known about him.
Faith Cooper is a liar. A stamp on her brain, a finite, immovable sentence appeared like a mirage behind her eyes, and along with it came a blinding headache. Digging in her pocket for a small bottle of acetaminophen she always carried, while he yammered on about what a fabulous person Miss Cooper was, she discreetly put two pills in her mouth and washed them down with cold coffee, sure to further upset her stomach.
“How did Mrs. Cooper know about the girlfriend?”
“She found some stuff at their boat,” he said. “She snuck over there, to Belle Isle, to see if he was there.”
“Did Mrs. Cooper meet the girlfriend at the boat?”
“No, not that time,” he said. “There might a’ been another time she went to the boat to see if she could catch them together. It’s a real nice boat, too. It’s out a’ the water now. But you can still go inside. They put a ladder there to climb in.”
Heart racing now, Jill thought she might jump ahead of herself if she wasn’t really careful now.
“When did you go to the boat?”
“I went with Miss Cooper on Wednesday after school. She said she needed to look for something they kept on the boat and when I asked to go along for the ride she said okay.”
“What was she looking for?” Jill asked.
“I don’t know. She never told me,” he said.
“Did you climb on board?”
Squirming oh so subtly, he nodded his head.
“What happened when you were on the boat? Did Mrs. Cooper make sexual advances toward you?”
“No! She said we couldn’t be together until I graduated.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“When we were at her house,” he said.
Floored, Jill repeated what he said, just to make sure she heard him correctly. “You went to her house,” she said.
“Yeah, a couple of times for help with homework.”
“When was this?” she asked, remembering that the husband supposedly didn’t know the boy the night at the restaurant.
“Always after school,” he said. “I’d leave before her husband got home because she said he had a temper.”
“You drove all the way to Birmingham. Why didn’t she help you at school, instead?�
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It was unmistakable; Chris Burns was blushing. Jill decided she’d try to appeal to his pride, but would let him have the next word.
“We wanted to be alone,” he admitted.
“Ah, I get it now. She must be in love with you,” Jill said softly. “You’re handsome, smart and kind. After her creepy, mean husband, you probably seemed like a savior to her.”
“I was! I mean I wanted to protect her from him. All he did was hurt and embarrass her.”
For the next full minute he rattled off the gossip he’d heard at school.
“When you were at her house, did you kiss Faith?” It was the first time she’d used the first name, and the response was immediate.
“Yes!” he said, bowing his head as the tears came again. Running his coat sleeve across his nose, he yelped like an animal in pain. “I love her!”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Not yet,” he said, hiccupping.
“What about foreplay?” she asked, not sure that was the right word to use.
What did they call it now? Not petting; that was from her father’s time. Messing around? Not specific enough.
Then he answered it for her. “We just messed around. I fingered her, and she blew me.”
Trying not to cringe, silence prevailed while she thought about what he’d said. He couldn’t be trusted, that much was clear. Scrutinizing him, she tried to picture the demure, impeccably dressed Faith Cooper with this grungy teenager.
Blanching, Jill looked at the recorder, then up at the video which was live stream, hoping her compadres were listening. Anyway, she’d definitely heard enough for now. Next, she sent a text to the lab. Prints and DNA testing needed. You got anyone available this late?
“Come along with me,” Jill said, standing up. “We’ve got a few things to take care of. And then we’ll decide what’s next.”
“Can I leave?” he asked.
“Oh no, we have probable cause to keep you around for a while,” she said. “You’ll be spending the night with us.”
While he ranted, she handed him over to an officer who’d take him to the lab for the printing and DNA test. Jill went to find Albert and Faith Cooper.
Stopping by a bank of monitors in which a gathering of male detectives watched as colleagues interrogated suspects and witnesses to crime, she prepared herself for their opinions, sometimes helpful.
“Hey, Jill,” they chorused. “Good job.”
“Who’s the slime ball?” a fellow detective asked softly.
“She’s with Albert right now,” Jill answered, suddenly spent.
“No, I meant the kid,” he said, laughing, but Jill was stony, the unlikely, unbelievable comments Chris Burns made ricocheting in her head. What if they were true?
“Here’s Albert,” someone offered, pointing to a monitor.
They stepped back so she could look.
“Doesn’t sound like they’re getting very far,” one man said. “A lotta crying.”
Sighing, Jill didn’t think her presence would help, it felt all wrong interrupting him. Getting out her phone, she sent his a short text. How’s everything?
A quick answer, I have to go.
Chuckling, she slid out of the crowd, relieved. “What room is that?”
“Six,” they chorused. “What? Wong gotta go?”
“Ha! Yes,” she said, happy for the ridiculous bathroom humor segue, helping her to clear her head.
It was an inside joke, bandied about as respectfully as a bunch of cops were able, that Albert Wong’s bladder capacity was small. When they were out on a case, he never compromised Jill’s wellbeing or comfort by peeing at the side of the road, so they knew where all the public restrooms were in the county.
Tapping on the interrogation room door, she didn’t wait for a response to enter. Nodding at Faith Cooper, the woman burst into tears seeing Jill.
“I’m trying to tell Detective Wong that I’ve already told you everything I know!” she cried.
Pulling out a chair to sit, Jill pressed her lips together, determined to stay calm. Albert left the room, his discomfort, both physical and mental, clear. Jill watched the door closing; either he really had to go or he was near the end of his reserves with an uncooperative interrogatee.
“That’s not exactly true,” Jill replied. “Young Chris Burns tells me you confided in him about Ken’s affair. And, and this really pisses me off, you took him to the boat. Tell me about that trip to the boat, Faith.”
Painfully watching the color drain from Faith Cooper’s already colorless face, Jill had to look away for a moment, determined not to allow any compassion for this woman to sway the interpretation of the law.
“I told him because he saw me crying. But I never did anything inappropriate with him. As a matter of fact, I did everything in my power to make sure it never came to that. Chris approached me at school last Monday about the scene at the restaurant and I told him not to speak to me about it. My principal knew about Chris. I called him as soon as it happened.”
“What did you call the principal about?” Jill asked. “It sounds like Chris saw you having a fight with your husband and he was just concerned.”
“He said he followed Ken. He said he followed the girl, Allison.”
Perhaps this was how Chris knew about the couple, before Faith confided in him.
“I didn’t want to hear it, especially from him. There’s so much gossip at school about my husband as it is, I was trying to discourage more.”
“Why would there be gossip about your husband?”
“Ha! He’s gorgeous, that’s why, and the other teachers are jealous. It started at a staff Christmas party before we got married. Ken got drunk and disappeared with one of the gym teachers.”
“Nice,” Jill said, disgusted. “What happened after that?”
“He claimed nothing, but it was too late because she told the others that he practically raped her. But it didn’t go further than that.”
Looking at her own hands, at her broken fingernails that were long neglected save for a weekly clipping, Jill wondered what would possess an accomplished, refined appearing woman in her thirties to pursue a sexual relationship with a teenager. Glancing at the contrast of Faith Cooper’s hands, at her perfectly painted nails, the large diamond ring, her sparkling white cuffs folded over, Jill saw that she’d taken the time to dress neatly, apply makeup and do her hair before her middle of the night rendezvous with the police.
Quickly sending Albert a text, Please ask for/get a warrant for Chris Burns phone ASAP. Take it out of his possession.
“Hand over your phone, please,” she asked.
Calmly going through her purse, Faith retrieved it and passed it off to Jill.
“Just leave it on the table,” Jill said.
She couldn’t legally look at the phone without a warrant, but she could make sure Faith didn’t erase anything on it in case there were text messages between the two which would detail their relationship. Watching her, Jill wondered what Faith’s motivation was to identify Chris Burns as the driver of the Mustang in the video.
“Chris tells me you had a sexual relationship,” Jill said softly, challenging her, but respectfully.
While Faith sputtered, denying the accusation, Jill flipped through her note book.
“I could play you the tape of his interview, but I’ll just read you what he said, to save the embarrassment. ‘I fingered her and she blew me.’”
Making sure she was angled in the chair so her face was fully visible on camera, if Jill really knew her colleagues, they were whopping it up out in the hall after watching and listening to the despicable accusation, but she needed to have the confrontation recorded to prove that she didn’t use intimidation by her facial expressions.
“That’s a lie! He’s lying!” she cried. “He tried to get me involved, and I refused many times!”
“Why’d you take him to the boat?” Jill ask
ed, ignoring her beeping phone.
“I was going to remove my belongings, and he offered to come along.”
“Mrs. Cooper, this is the exact opposite of what you’d said before. Either you have a relationship with Chris Burns, or you don’t.”
“I swear to you, and I’ll take a lie detector test if I have to, I never had a sexual relationship with the boy.”
“He says he came to your house in Birmingham to do homework.”
“That’s a lie. He’s never been to my house. Actually, that might not be the case, because he admitted to following us. He may have followed me to my house, but I didn’t invite him there. The only time he was in my car was the one isolated time we went to Belle Isle to the boat. The gatekeeper there will attest that I came in with a passenger and left within fifteen minutes at the most. It takes five minutes to get the ladder and climb aboard.”
Taking her phone, she saw that Albert was trying to call her. “I’ll be right back,” she said, standing up to leave. “Don’t touch that phone. I’ll be watching.”
Waiting for her outside of the door with a sheath of papers, Albert was visibly agitated.
“What is it?” she asked. “Calm down, Albert.”
“I can’t. They brought the husband in,” he said. “He’s got an alibi for Sunday night just as his wife said; doing the carpenter thing at his in-laws with all the neighbors there, offering advice.”
“Where was he just now?”
“At their boat, hiding. He knew something was wrong when Allison Blumenthal didn’t show up for work Monday morning. He drove by her place and saw her car in the parking lot of the donut shop, but she wasn’t in there.”
“Do you want to talk to the husband?” he asked.
Their phones beeped simultaneously with a text coming in. “It’s Maxine! What the hell is she doing here?”
The Donut Shop Murder Page 7
